Ben Askren gives a ‘humbling’ update

UFC legend Ben Askren has had one heck of a ride as of late. A few months ago, Askren was healthy with no plans for the remainder of the year.

Askren had no plans of fighting for his life for months and undergoing a double lung transplant.

Askren has said that he doesn’t remember anything from May 28 until July 2, all he knows is that he survived. He was recently released from the hospital after 59 days but then re-admitted with a possible infection.

Throughout the process, Askren, along with his family have provided fans with regular updates of his health. On Sunday, Askren posted an update on his social media from a hospital bed.

Askren mentioned that the experience has been ‘humbling’ to say the least.

“I believe this is update No. 8, and I’m still in the effing hospital. I came on Monday for a checkup. They said something was infected, and now it’s kind of just been thing after thing after thing,” Askren said.

“I’m going to be out of here sometime. I just don’t know when it is, so I just had to tell myself that, tell myself to be patient and not get too frustrated,” Askren continued.

Despite the numerous setbacks that Askren has experienced, he has still remained positive about the direction his recovery is going. Throughout his updates, he has also delivered inspirational messages.

“The topic I want to talk about today is pride. This has been a really, really humbling experience because before this I was pretty much totally self-sufficient,” he said.

“I took care of myself, didn’t ask for help, but man, when you can’t, I couldn’t run away when I couldn’t walk and talk. I asked for help. And even now, especially when I’m at home, I’ve got to keep asking for help because I can’t do much myself at all. That was kind of humbling, and it was good,” Askren continued.

“The way I see pride or ego, they hold so many people back in life. The biggest thing I can relate in wrestling to it is there’s certain kids with too much pride and they’re unwilling to admit what their bigger problem is. If I can tell a kid, ‘Hey, this is your problem,’ and they don’t have ego, they’ll work to solve that problem,” he added. “If they have too much pride, they’re aways going to make excuse for why that big problem isn’t a problem.”

Askren ended the video with these words, “That same kind of thing happens in regular life also. People with too much pride don’t want to admit what their bigger problem is. A lot of times they don’t admit they have a problem at all, but to the outside looking in people, it’s obvious, obvious they have some issues. If you acknowledge what your problem is, you can solve your problem. If you’re unwilling to acknowledge your problem, you really can’t solve it.”