Flex Wheeler was at the top of bodybuilding when a rare kidney disease ended his career. In this clip from his 2018 London Real interview, one of the most honest conversations on the channel, he tells Brian Rose what followed: losing his sponsors and his home, a transplant that nearly killed him, a spell in a psychiatric ward, and the day he decided to stop feeling sorry for himself.
It’s a hard twelve minutes, but it ends somewhere hopeful.
▶ Watch the full episode: Kenneth Flex Wheeler
“Did I do this to myself?”
Wheeler was diagnosed in 1999 with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a rare kidney disease. His first question to the doctors was whether his own choices in the sport had caused it. They told him no, pointing out that NBA star Alonzo Mourning had the same disease, and later he met families whose young children had it too.
The public didn’t believe it. His sponsors, he says, “ran like the plague”, assuming the illness was a result of what bodybuilders do.
From a mansion to a single bed
He lost his contracts, his cars and a house so big people got lost in it. He, his then-wife and their two children ended up sharing one room and one bed in his mother-in-law’s three-bedroom house, alongside other relatives, with his dialysis machine. When people asked why he was depressed when he was still alive, he explains with an analogy: the higher you fall from, the more it hurts.
A transplant that went wrong
At one point the doctors wanted him on dialysis for 12 hours a day. He refused, and says he would rather have died. Then a donor kidney became available. But because his donor was small and he was a 260-pound bodybuilder, surgeons had to improvise, and complications followed: nine surgeries in 11 weeks, several of which he says he nearly didn’t survive.
On heavy painkillers, he became confused and began hallucinating, and he was moved to a psychiatric unit. He says he later found two of his medications carried a warning against being taken together, and after that was raised he was moved back to a normal ward.
The visitor
The turning point, he says, came one night when a woman he took to be a nurse sat on his bed and asked why he was pitying himself, when he had travelled the world, won shows and had children and a family. He describes it as the moment he decided to “start a fight.”
“It’s going to have to come and get me”
Months later, doctors told him the disease hadn’t gone away. It could attack his new kidney, and he might need another transplant. He went home and stayed in bed for three days. Then he got angry with his own self-pity. His decision: get back in shape and live his life, so that if the disease came back, “it’s gonna have to come and find me.”
What to take from it
Wheeler doesn’t pretend he handled it well at first. What makes the story valuable is his honesty about depression and despair, and the very ordinary decision that turned it around: to stop waiting for the worst and start living anyway.
This clip describes Flex Wheeler’s personal medical history and is not medical advice. If you’re struggling, please talk to someone you trust or contact a support service. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.
Who is Flex Wheeler?
Kenneth “Flex” Wheeler is an American former IFBB professional bodybuilder from California, a multiple Arnold Classic champion and a Mr. Olympia runner-up, once described by Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the greatest bodybuilders he had ever seen. After his illness he wrote a memoir and has spoken widely about depression and resilience.
In the full 2018 episode, he talks with Brian Rose about his childhood, bodybuilding, depression and learning to love himself. You can also watch his London Real Success Secrets: Kenneth Flex Wheeler – Success Secrets.
See everything Flex Wheeler has done with London Real on his guest page: Flex Wheeler on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Flex Wheeler – “I Lost Everything”: Kidney Disease, Depression And Deciding To Fight
0:00 Brian Rose: So being yanked out of the sport at the top of your game. That’s rough.
0:05 Flex Wheeler: It was really a spiral down. When I found out I had the disease in ’99, it was so rare at that time that they ran tests for another year before they even told me, because they wanted to be sure. And being how I am, I asked them: did I do this? Did I do this to myself, based on what I’ve used, what I’ve done? If I made my bed, I’ve got to sleep in it. And they said no. I said, how do you know that? And I remember him saying there’s a famous basketball player who has the same disease, and we know he didn’t do what you do. They wouldn’t tell me his name then, but now I know: it’s Alonzo Mourning. And later I started meeting families with kids who obviously didn’t do what I did.
1:06 Flex Wheeler: So I finally had the disease, and that was rough, because all my contracts left. They ran like the Black Plague. You can imagine: athletes have to look a certain way, and there’s a dark side to what they do, and now you have kidney failure. Try to convince people it’s not connected to what you’re doing. “You’re lying, of course it is.” No, it’s a rare kidney disease. It’s FSGS, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. “Sure it is, son.” So they all ran like the plague, and I lost everything: my mansion, my cars.
1:55 Flex Wheeler: I was fortunate. I had a really, really big house. People would come and get lost if they went the wrong direction. And from that, I was forced to go and stay with my mother-in-law in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom. Me, my now ex-wife and our two kids living in one room, all three of us in a single bed. Her sister, her husband and their kids in another room, and her mother in another. Not to mention I had my dialysis machine; I was dialysing myself. And I thought: wow, this is my life now.
2:41 Flex Wheeler: People would say, “Why are you depressed? You’re here, Flex.” I couldn’t get that. I’d look at everything I’d lost. If you fall from this height, it hurts a certain amount. If you fall from way up there, it’s much greater. You’re just saying it because you weren’t up there.
3:08 Flex Wheeler: Fast forward. I was on dialysis every other day for three hours, and at the time I was still around 260 pounds, so I was too heavy, and the kidney disease was getting more aggressive. It got to the point where they wanted me to come in every day for 12 hours, and I told them to go eff themselves. I’d rather die. They said, you’re going to die if you don’t, and we’re not sure you’ll make it even if you do. I said, I don’t have a life if I come in here and do that. I wasn’t thinking about my kids or anything at the time. It was just the darkness I was in.
3:57 Flex Wheeler: So, fortunately, I got a kidney transplant, and I thought that was great. But my donor was a woman, very petite, and while they had us on the table they discovered the main artery to her kidney was short, because she’s tiny and I’m big. They were going to put the kidney back in her and stitch me back up, and then one of the surgeons had an idea: take an artery from me and extend it to make the surgery work. Because I was 260 pounds and probably about four percent body fat, they used these huge clamps to open everything up, and because I was clamped for so long, it killed the main artery there.
4:55 Flex Wheeler: So they got it to work, but long story short, I ended up having nine surgeries in 11 weeks that I almost died from, and the most blood-curdling pain I’ve ever experienced. I was on oxycodone, injectable and pills, a Demerol pump, and an epidural in my spine. I was hallucinating. I was in la-la land. They took me from my hospital bed and put me in a mental institution on the other side of the hospital, because I was just gone.
5:38 Flex Wheeler: And here we come back to what I was talking about with drugs. Instead of helping me, all they did was put me on more drugs. We all know that when you’re on a tremendous amount of painkillers, depression follows. So: now we need to put you on antidepressants. That’s not working, let’s switch you to this. And it spiralled. I ended up having a bad reaction and just losing it. Weeks would go by, and to me they were seconds.
6:03 Flex Wheeler: I remember asking a friend, “What do you think of my dog?” and he said, “What dog, Flex?” and I was pointing at my foot. I only know these things because people told me later. Something even more embarrassing: my niece was visiting, and I was asking her, “What underwear have you got on?” She didn’t tell me until years later, and when she told me I was sobbing. That’s my niece. She said, “Uncle Kenny, I knew that wasn’t you. It didn’t bother me.” And another time I was starving, because I was fasting for all these tests, and I was coming off eating 8,000 calories a day. I was angry and hallucinating, opening the cupboards, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and only when I bit into it did I realise there was nothing there but air.
7:08 Flex Wheeler: So they put me in a mental institution, and through arguing with them we discovered that two of my medications had a warning right on the label: do not take these two together, or it causes this. They said, “No, we don’t think so.” I said, “It’s right there, read it.” And they came back and said, “We think you’re onto something.” I said, I want out of here. They said, “You have to stay. You were suicidal before, so you need help.” I said, no, I beat that. This is your fault. They said, just stay one more day and let’s make sure. The next day I was even better, so they put me back on the other side of the hospital.
8:30 Flex Wheeler: That was really hard. And I can’t really explain it, but I remember my room was really dark, and I thought it was a nurse, because nurses would come in and draw blood at all hours. To this day I still wonder. She came in and sat on my bed and said, “What are you upset about? Why are you feeling sorry for yourself?” I said, “Look at me.” She said, “But look at everything you’ve done. You travelled the world, you made money, you won shows. Look at everything great you’ve done.” I said, “But I ain’t nothing now. Look at me.” “You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. What about your kids? What about your family? Do you think of them?” And I just remember waking up, and that was the beginning of me stopping the fright and starting a fight.
9:11 Flex Wheeler: After I left the hospital I had to see the doctors every three months, which was really critical. I’m dyslexic, and I’m very good at remembering words, the exact language people use. And the way they talked to me was always the same, always the same questions: do you feel this, does this happen? And after my third visit, nine months in, I said: why do you keep asking me these questions? “Well, we just need to know.” Why? “It doesn’t matter.” It does matter, this is my life.
10:07 Flex Wheeler: “Well, Flex, the disease doesn’t go away.” What do you mean? I had a kidney transplant. “This is not like a heart transplant, where you get a new heart and you’re fine. The disease ravaged your kidney. It’s not in your kidney, it’s still in you.” He tried to cut the conversation off, and I got angry and hostile: no, you’re going to tell me, this is my life. “Well, you’ll have to have another transplant. Your disease could attack this kidney.” So you’re saying I’ve got to go through all this again? “Don’t worry about it, you’re a kidney transplant patient, you’ll be fine.”
10:57 Flex Wheeler: That’s like telling a woman she’s going to give birth again even though she almost died nine times giving birth to the last one. They said, we don’t know that it’s going to happen. I said, but I know it’s possible, because I went through it. And I went home in a state of depression. I thought I was done. I think I lay in bed for maybe three days, allowing Kenny to beat me up, like the old days.
11:34 Flex Wheeler: And I got tired, and angry with the pity crap. I said, you know what? I’m OK. If this is going to happen, it’s going to have to come and get me. I’m going to get up, I’m going to go and live my life, I’m going to get back in shape. When it knocks on the door, I’m not answering, I’m out somewhere. It’s going to have to come and find me. I’m not going to sit here and let it just come in: hey, how you doing, come on in. Because I’m a fighter.
