MIAMI (WSVN) - A South Florida man is ready to run in the Miami Marathon and Half to check off a long-awaited promise following his long recovery journey.
Farouk Gomati said that for 11 years, he has said that he would run the track of the marathon the moment he is healthy enough to do so.
That moment has now arrived.
Eleven years ago, Gomati said, his life changed.
“I was actually on tour in Latin America, and right after the tour finished, a week later, came back to Miami, feeling odd, weird,” he said.
That weird feeling first started in his toes. Over the course of a couple of days, it moved across his body.
“I wake up, and I don’t feel my tongue, and I realize I’m mute, like, there’s no voice coming out of me,” said Gomati.
He said went to the hospital and was eventually put into an induced coma while doctors worked to figure out his diagnosis.
Three weeks later, he woke up to unimaginable news.
“I realized that I was 100% paralyzed. Like, I could see everything, and I could hear everything, but I was basically trapped in my own body,” said Gomati.
He was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Doctors said this occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system.
Gomati said he felt like there was nothing he could do.
“There’s no medicine. There’s no surgery or diet or therapy to actually make a full recovery. It’s the body that decides at one point to heal,” he said.
Doctors told Gomati’s wife and family that he wouldn’t make it or that if he did, he would live out the rest of his days in a wheelchair and on a ventilator.
But about a week out from his coma, things started to change.
“We realized that I had some movements in my hands,” said Gomati.
Slowly, Gomati said he started feeling better.
As weeks passed, he eventually worked up to pushing himself in a wheelchair and then gradually began taking his first steps again.
Gomati, whose son was 4 months old at the time of his diagnosis, said it was a tough learning process.
“I had to relearn everything at a very slow pace, so I can’t – I’m not going to lie, I was, in many, many times, I was depressed,” he said.
He said it took two years to fully recover, but to help him find some light at the end of this daunting tunnel, he set a personal goal to reach toward.
“I said, ‘God, if one day I can get off this wheelchair and walk again, I promise you, I’m going to run a race,'” he said.
Eleven years later, at the 2025 Miami Half Marathon, he’s reaching for that goal.
“It’s a lot of emotions. Now I have a daughter. I didn’t have the daughter back then, and just the idea of reaching that finish line and see my family there is, like, so, so special,” he said.
He said he has been training for the past four months to get ready for this marathon.
It is a sport that he’s since embraced but thought he’d never do again.
“This run, this specific run, is about being grateful, thankful for all the little things that we have and don’t realize,” Gomati said.
He added that he’s gotten a new view in life, and now it’s not only music that moves him, but also his family, faith and his feet.
Gomati provided some advice to those who may feel helpless in their current situation.
“My advice is that to never give up, live one day at a time, and set goals, ambitious goals,” said Gomati.
The runner said he remains with one lagging symptom from his diagnosis: he can’t feel his toes.
However, he said, his months of training have helped him get used to that uneasy feeling, and he remains ready to run through the finish line at Bayfront Park this weekend.
For information on road closures and transportation options, click here.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.