I Lost My Arm Trying To Get The 'Perfect' Physique | SHAKE MY BEAUTY
GABRIEL was 17 when he hit the gym for the first time, working out to sculpt and build his body. He told Truly: "I wanted to be appealing to the opposite sex. I wanted to be a big, strong man." Determined to look his best, Gabriel dedicated three hours each day to training. "I just wanted to be bigger than everyone else," he admitted. One day in November 2020, Gabriel did a 50 kilos bicep curl when things took a dramatic turn. He explained: "I heard a loud snapping sound. Screamed in the middle of the gym, dropped the weight and went to the hospital." Assessing his injuries, doctors told Gabriel that they would have to reattach his bicep with elective surgery. However, just days after the operation, Gabriel was rushed back to hospital and put in an induced coma for 10 days. Gabriel had contracted an infection called necrotising-fasciitis. He said: "It's basically a bug that kills your flesh. The infection was spreading. They just had to keep removing flesh because it was spreading so rapidly and I was more likely to die than pull through." Luckily, Gabriel survived, but to save his life, surgeons were forced to amputate his right arm. "It wasn't until three days after I woke up that I looked in the mirror and my arm was missing. It was confronting to say the least," he said. In this episode of Shake My Beauty, we'll hear about the physical and mental obstacles that Gabriel has endured since that life-changing day. Reflecting on his journey, Gabriel revealed: "Beauty comes in many forms. Regardless of how you look, it's still important to be a beautiful person on the inside."
Follow Gabriel here - https://www.instagram.com/gabelieschke/
Follow Gabriel here - https://www.instagram.com/gabelieschke/
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FunTranscript
00:00 I'm Gabriel. I lost my arm in the pursuit of an ideal physique.
00:03 I trained like a madman for no purpose,
00:07 except that I wanted to look a certain way.
00:09 I heard a loud snapping sound,
00:11 screamed in the middle of the gym.
00:13 I was more likely to die than to pull through.
00:20 I remember going into public
00:22 and being completely devastated by the fact
00:24 that everyone was looking at me.
00:26 You can lose an arm, something bad can happen to you,
00:28 but if you keep going, you can achieve amazing things.
00:31 My name is Gabriel and I'm 30 years old.
00:36 I spend a lot of my time with my grandparents.
00:39 I have a six-month-old puppy
00:42 that also takes up a lot of my time.
00:45 The rest of my time I spend training
00:48 to try and make the Paralympics next year.
00:52 I lost my arm in pursuit of an ideal physique.
00:56 So I reckon I was 17 years old when I started going to the gym.
01:00 I initially joined the gym
01:02 because I wanted to be appealing to the opposite sex
01:05 and, you know, just wanted to be a big, strong young man.
01:09 My typical workout week would have looked like
01:13 probably three hours in the gym a day at least.
01:15 With a rest day maybe once a month.
01:20 I like training as hard as I could all the time.
01:26 That was how I identified.
01:27 I've always had this point of not feeling good enough.
01:33 Like, no matter how good I've looked,
01:35 there's always been striving to be better and better and better.
01:37 But I'm actually happy with the way that I look at the moment.
01:42 We all feel some pressure to look a certain way.
01:45 I suppose that's a social construct of the world we live in today.
01:49 I just wanted to be...
01:50 ..bigger than everyone else.
01:54 Mid-November in 2020,
01:57 I was at a gym, did a 50kg bicep curl
02:02 and at the bottom of the extension,
02:05 I heard a loud snapping sound.
02:07 Um...
02:09 Screamed in the middle of the gym, dropped the weight
02:12 and went to the hospital,
02:15 where they told me that having my bicep reattached
02:18 was an elective surgery and sent me home with some painkillers.
02:22 Two days following the initial injury,
02:25 I had, um...
02:27 ..standard surgery to have my bicep reattached.
02:30 And my arm was swelling.
02:35 I was in a lot of pain,
02:36 taking more painkillers than I should have needed for the procedure.
02:41 I have little to no memory of what happened
02:43 in between discharge then and going back into hospital.
02:47 But what I do know is that a locum came out
02:50 three days after the initial surgery and...
02:53 ..were very alarmed and said, "Straight to hospital."
02:57 They put me in an induced coma for 10 days,
03:00 where they did 11 major surgeries.
03:02 And, um...
03:06 ..and when I woke up,
03:08 I had no idea that I'd lost my arm.
03:10 The infection that caused the loss of my arm
03:17 was called necrotising fasciitis.
03:20 Basically, a bug that kills your flesh.
03:24 The infection was spreading.
03:26 They chopped my arm below the elbow,
03:28 then they chopped it above the elbow,
03:30 and they just had to keep removing flesh
03:33 'cause it was...it was spreading so rapidly.
03:36 And I was...
03:39 ..more likely to die than to pull through.
03:42 My dad was calling my friends, saying, "Gabe's gonna die."
03:45 It was very touch-and-go the whole time.
03:48 And when I woke up,
03:50 I didn't understand the conversation that I had with the surgeon.
03:53 It wasn't until three days after I woke up
03:55 that I looked in the mirror and my arm was missing.
03:58 It was...
04:02 ..confronting, to say the least.
04:04 The biggest challenge for me, initially,
04:09 was to accept that it was gone.
04:12 I had scar tissue all through my shoulder.
04:15 I, you know, the range of motion when I came out was about that.
04:19 I couldn't do anything. I couldn't walk a metre.
04:22 Like, I lost conditioning completely.
04:24 It took...
04:26 ..six weeks for me to be able to have a skin graft.
04:30 It took quite a long time for me to be able to have a routine
04:36 that didn't take me a million years,
04:38 'cause I was right-handed before.
04:40 So even just brushing my teeth with my left hand took a while
04:42 to be able to do comfortably without it kind of feeling weird.
04:45 You never think, "Oh, I've got two arms. How useful is this?"
04:48 It's only when you lose something you understand how important it is.
04:51 So I've always been quite a confident person.
04:54 I remember going into public
04:58 and being completely devastated by the fact that everyone was looking at me,
05:03 and I felt like I'd lost my confidence.
05:05 I felt like I couldn't speak to anyone.
05:07 And I went through this kind of painstaking process
05:11 of going out, breaking down, crying,
05:14 "Go sit in my car. Go get back out there and deal with it."
05:18 I'm still a little bit lost as to how I got into cycling,
05:24 but in terms of para sports,
05:27 cycling and rowing are sort of the two big ones in Adelaide.
05:32 I went to meet a guy who had a paralysed right arm
05:37 and he was a phenomenal cyclist.
05:40 That had a big role to play in me being pushed into that
05:43 because I still don't really know anyone that has the use of only one arm.
05:49 I think that being in that environment around some other para athletes
05:53 is kind of what drove me into it.
05:55 Initially, I was riding my bike just by holding it with one hand,
05:59 which was extremely scary.
06:02 So the point when I got a prosthetic where I could ride it was amazing.
06:09 But the prosthetic that I got, it works,
06:12 but it's not quite legal for competition at the moment,
06:14 so I'm in the process of getting a new prosthetic.
06:17 For the moment, this arm is actually very functional for what I need.
06:22 And it gives me stability to do basically everything I need.
06:27 And I imagine that when my prosthetic arm changes,
06:30 that I will have to relearn a whole lot of things,
06:33 but I'm hoping that it's not going to be too hard.
06:36 The first step of my prosthetic is the liner.
06:41 And this is just to create a good contact between my skin and the prosthetic.
06:47 This little ribbed pin slots into the bottom of my prosthetic.
06:54 So it's got a tight fit.
06:58 And the silicon sleeve means that it pulls,
07:02 distributes the weight the whole way around my residual limb.
07:05 So when I'm throwing, I can pull on it really, really hard.
07:09 And as long as I'm not too sweaty, it stays in the right spot.
07:12 So now I'm about jumping the rollers.
07:18 Rollers are primarily used to warm up before races at the velodrome.
07:22 They're really good to give you an even pedal stroke.
07:25 They basically just highlight all of the little fundamentals
07:30 that are really important when you're riding a bike to be a good cyclist.
07:33 I trained like a madman for no purpose,
07:41 except that I wanted to look a certain way.
07:43 You could meet a guy and you could add him on Instagram,
07:45 and they only see the best looking parts of their lives.
07:50 And it's not representative of anything real, ever.
07:54 Beauty comes in many forms.
07:56 Regardless of how you look,
07:57 it's still important to be a beautiful person on the inside.
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