At first glance, 24-year-old Teera Bangsarunthip looks just like any other man.
Teera Bangsarunthip is now healthier than he could ever imagine.
If you take a closer look though, you might notice there is something different about the way he walks.
Besides his slightly unsteady gait, nothing about his appearance gives away the fact that he has been through a decade-long battle with several severe illnesses.
"People just guess that I've had a minor accident with my leg," said Teera. "When I tell them what really happened, they are usually shocked."
For as long as Teera can remember, he has always been unhealthy, often getting hospitalised at least once a year.
"It was never anything serious, but it was frequent enough for me to know that I wasn't a healthy person, I didn't think it would reach the point where it literally hurt to be alive though."
Teera was 14 years old when he felt the first sharp, intolerable pain in his stomach. It turned out to be squamous cell cancer.
Teera went through 40 chemotherapy sessions in 10 months, or a session each week. His body reacted badly to the substance, and he would throw up for up to five days after each session and would eat only once a week, on the day the side effects started to fade, before undergoing another session the next day, and the brutal cycle would continue.
After about a year of living in the hospital, with no visitors allowed for fear of contamination, he was finally well enough to go back to school. In less than a year though, the cancer returned, this time to his spine and lungs.
"I was just beginning to learn how to walk again, after having been bedridden for almost a year. Imagine my shock when I realised that I would have to go back to square one and go through all the suffering again."
It is impossible to describe the pain that cancer patients go through, but Teera summed it up in just a sentence — death would be better. He had to take 35 pills each meal, four meals a day, just to get through each day. He was confined to a small hospital room, with only his mother and a television to keep him entertained. Every passing day was a hopeless agony, both physically and emotionally.
It all had been so traumatic that even talking about the experience now still makes him wince.
"There were so many side effects that virtually every part of my body was ruined. It even hurt to breathe, let alone walk. My bones were so fragile that even sitting was too much work for me," recalls Teera who manages to joke that apart from the mortuary, he had been to almost every department of the hospital for his various illnesses.
He has reason to smile now though, as the healthy-looking man recently made it to the final round of a health transformation competition by Fitness First Thailand.
Teera recalled that his doctor had actually told him that he would not be able to walk again, given his seemingly impossible physical condition. Instead of feeling discouraged, he felt defiant and told himself that it was time to turn his life around.
After being discharged from the hospital, Teera first started exercising at home, lifting light weights that, he remembered, felt unbelievably heavy. He weighed under 40kg at the time, and he physically shrank from 170cm to just over 150cm. Teera knew he had a lot of work to do.
"When I got a little stronger, and was able to walk with a walker, I decided to join a gym. I was intimidated at first, because everyone else seemed so fit. Little by little, my confidence grew and so did my physical strength," said Teera, who has been going to the gym three times a week ever since.
After three months, he could leave his walker in the locker room. After eight months, he was amazed at his transformation — his formerly thin arms were muscular and his legs were strong enough to take him places without a walker. He'd started with lifting a bottle of water, and can now do reps using a 14kg weight. His body is now functioning well enough for him to live at home and spend time in public places, not permanently at the hospital.
Today, although Teera is still living with cancer, he feels better about his health than he ever has in his entire life. The man who was told by the doctor that he would not be able to walk again can now walk around the gigantic Impact exhibition hall without a problem.
Looking back, he said he did not feel particularly unfortunate, although he admitted that it had been a traumatic and difficult experience for both him and his family.
"Initially, I felt it was so unfair that I had to go through all that when I was only 14 years old. But at the hospital, I saw newborns who had cancer, and much more complicated cases than I was faced with. I felt lucky that I had lived normally for 14 whole years, and that I shouldn't complain," said Teera with almost contagious optimism.
The heart-wrenching experience has planted a seed of positivity in Teera, and he is now ready to live his life to the fullest. He is endlessly thankful that he can walk, work and socialise like everyone else.
"When you've reached the point where death would be preferable, every moment after that point is a gift. I embrace each new day as the best gift of my life because never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be impossible to live this way, to be ordinary again," said the extraordinary young man.
