OTROS RESIDUOS

“We’re just watching a game. We got time. You been sick?” Buddy said.

“Guess you might say that. Okay, I’ve been wanting to come down and talk to Bill anyway about this whole deal. I’ve tried calling but only get your fax. Truth is, I’m at a loss for what to do right now. I know I need to do something, but I’m not sure how to go about it.”

“Why’d you stop training?” I in- quired.

“I’ll start at the beginning of the ordeal, in 2003. I was training for the Nationals to be held out in Columbus, which is a lot closer than it usually is, so I wouldn’t have to take much time off from work. My lifts were all moving up nicely, and I was getting psyched. If I kept improving, I had a shot at placing. Then I started getting these head- aches—migraines—and I seldom got headaches. I figured it was from working out in the sun for so long. We’d been really busy with all the new buildings going up. I remem- ber Bill telling me to take lots of the water-soluble vitamins and miner- als in hot weather. It helped some, but I still got those splitting head- aches a couple times a week. I didn’t great lengths to avoid laying out

even five bucks to lift. So I always managed to have a guest pass for him or take him to someone’s home gym. It was a fair deal for me, since he paid for everything else when he stayed with me.

We stayed up till four a.m. talking and slept past noon. Then I fixed a huge ham-and-cheese omelet, and we lounged around watching beach volleyball and baseball. Saturday is my slug day, and Uncle Buddy said he was taking a day off as well, so we didn’t have to plan around any training.

That evening, after crab cakes at Grumpy’s, I drove him over to Rip- ken Stadium, where the Aberdeen IronBirds were playing the Oneonta Tigers from upstate New York. The real reason for going to the stadium wasn’t to watch the game as much as to see whether Cal was in atten- dance. He’d recently been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Uncle Buddy wanted to get him to autograph a baseball for the son of a lady friend.

The place was packed, and all we could get were standing-room- only tickets. That was fine with us because we both pre-

ferred

to stand rather than squeeze into an uncomfortable seat. After Buddy bought a baseball from the shop inside the stadium, we found a spot with a nice breeze and leaned against a support beam. While keep-

ing a lookout for any stray foul balls, we chatted and scanned the crowd in hopes of spotting Cal.

We’d been there for only about 15 minutes when I saw Ken walking toward us, grin- ning like a Cheshire cat. “Well,” he blurted, “if it ain’t the hermit and his famous uncle. Good to see you guys.” Uncle Buddy and I shook his hand.

We’d trained with Ken on several occasions when Fielder’s Shed was the place for heavy lifting in the county. It’s since been replaced by a three-car garage. Ken owns and operates a highly successful survey- ing business and was one of the best athletes to come out of North Har-

ford High School. He was all-conference at Gettys-

burg College and went on to play three years

of Arena football before becoming a powerlift-

er. At one time he was ranked in the top 10

in his weight division, the 220-pound class.

I hadn’t seen him for a long time and was stunned at his appearance. He’d

gone from being a stout athlete to a

slumping, over- weight shell of his former self. I

didn’t comment because I fig-

ured he’d been sick, but Uncle

Buddy didn’t hold back.

“What the hell happened

to you?” he asked in his typical blunt fashion. “It’s sort of a long story,” Ken muttered.

300 MARCH 2008 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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say anything to Helen, but they were wearing me down.

“Then, during one heavy workout I got nosebleed when I did my heavy set of squats. I didn’t think it was a big problem, only some weak tissue, and I was putting out 100 percent on that squat and didn’t plan on telling Helen. But damn if she didn’t spot the bloody towel in my gym bag, and that’s when the shit hit the fan. She’s never liked the idea that I took steroids and insisted that I go to our family doctor to get checked out. She even tagged along just to make sure I didn’t skip the appoint- ment.”

“Bad news?” Uncle Buddy asked. “From the get-go. First thing he did was check my blood pressure, and he nearly dropped his stetho- scope. It was off the charts, 190 over 130.”

“Good grief,” Uncle Buddy said, and I whistled.

“He didn’t tell me what it meant exactly, except to say I was lucky that I didn’t have a stroke. Either of you know?”

“That’s more my nephew’s terri- tory,” Uncle Buddy said.

“The first number in the blood pressure reading,” I said, “measures systolic pressure, the force exerted against the walls of the arteries when the heart beats and pushes blood out into them. The second figure is your diastolic pressure, the force exerted when your heart rests between beats. Both are way too high, but that diastolic is the scary one. And he told you it was due to taking steroids?”

“Well,” said Ken, “I hadn’t men- tioned them yet. I was hoping it might be some kind of virus or flu bug. But when he asked me to tell him all the medication I was tak- ing, I told him about the ’roids. He wasn’t happy because he knew I didn’t get them from him. But even then, I wasn’t positive they were the source of my problems. I’d always heard that injectables were safe. It’s the oral kind that cause trouble.”

“Not completely true,” I an- swered. “The injectables are usually safer than orals, but they’re not safe- safe. While the orals put more stress on your liver than the injectables because they pass through your liver twice and the injectables only

once, how they affect you depends on lots of other factors: age, diet, how many other foods you eat that place undue demands on your liver. Then there’s always the matter of individual differences.”

“He took some blood for a liver function test and gave me some medicine to help lower my blood pressure and in no uncertain terms told me not to take any more ’roids. He put a rush on the liver function test and called me two days later. He wanted to put me in the hospital because my liver was in such bad shape, but I refused. I was way too busy to be lying around in a hospital bed and I felt okay. The headaches had stopped. I agreed to do what- ever he told me, but no hospital.” “How much and what were you taking?” Uncle Buddy wanted to know.

“Lately just Deca-Durabolin,” Ken said. “I’d start with one cc a week and slowly increase the dosage over a two-month period. When the headaches started, I was up to three ccs twice a week.”

“Damn!” Uncle Buddy grunted. “You were a human pincushion.”

Ken laughed. “You can say that again. My ass was always sore.”

“That’s when you quit training?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I stuck with it. I knew I wasn’t going to be nearly as strong as I was and had to for- get about the Nationals, but I still wanted to stay in decent shape

and maintain a respectable level of strength.

“For about a month everything was okay. My lifts dropped but not too much. Then I started losing weight. I chugged down protein shakes and ate throughout the day to keep it up. All of a sudden, my appetite went south, and my energy level dropped to zero. I couldn’t make it through a complete workout without having to lie down between sets. Even when I cut my program way back, I still couldn’t do a full workout. It was really discouraging.

“When I went back to the doctor for a follow-up, he ran more tests. My liver was much better because I’d also eliminated alcohol and any- thing else that made it work harder. My blood pressure had dropped to 160 over 110—not good but getting there. I asked him why I was losing weight and strength so fast, and he told me it was because my testos- terone level was way below normal. He said the glands that produce testosterone had almost shut down because of the ’roids. I’d never heard anything about that before. You?”

“Sure,” I said. “Lots of times when high dosages are used. The ’roids are basically just synthetic forms of the male hormone. When you over- load your system with any kind of steroid, your body stops producing testosterone. It’s kind of a defense mechanism to prevent you from overwhelming your liver, kidneys and other organs. Your body is

302 MARCH 2008 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

always trying to maintain equilib- rium. In your case your hypothala- mus—which controls the nervous and endocrine systems—sent sig- nals to your testicles that there was plenty of testosterone available and to stop making it. When they shut down for a long time, as often hap- pens when someone never takes a layoff from using ’roids, the glands cease to function. The good news is they’ll recover, but it may take some time.

“You said this was in 2003. I bet you’re producing testosterone at the same level as you used to before the ’roids. Have you had it tested?”

“No. No reason to when I quit lifting.”

“So what prompted you to quit altogether,” I asked.

“Well, I started getting injured,” Ken replied. “First came my lower back, then my right knee, then my right shoulder. I decided to give my body a rest to let everything heal. We’d just started in on surveying Bulle Rock and putting in really long hours, so it seemed like the right time for a break.”

“And you never started back,” said Uncle Buddy.

He nodded. “Yeah. For one thing, I was embarrassed to go to the gym and let my old buddies see how weak I was. Then I started to pack on weight, and not the good kind. It wasn’t long before I became a

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