"Hope you die" inside a get well card
Show notes
Part two with Michael Crossland picks up where the trial drug left off. The doctors said he'd never go to school, never play sport, and if he reached his teenage years it'd be a miracle. His mum told him everything was going to be okay and sent him to school anyway.
School turned out harder than hospital. No hair, no eyelashes, bandages over the burns, a nebuliser at every recess, and not a single day he didn't cop it from the other kids. Then, laid up after his first heart attack at just 12 years old, a get well card arrived from his class. Buried in the nice messages were four words he can still see clearly today: hope you die, Steve. What that card taught him about whose words get to weigh you down, and what's really in your cup when life bumps you, became the foundation of everything he now shares on stage.
From a 22 student primary school to a 1200 student high school, from being told he'd never play sport again to making the under 16 Australian baseball team two years later, Michael ends up on a full ride scholarship in Texas at 17, telling American girls his cancer scar came off a crocodile's tail. Six months in, he slid into second base, woke up in hospital, and at 18 it was all over. And as he says, that's only the start of it.
#propertrueyarn
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