5th Anniversary

The nerve damage continues as it was - no improvement, no decline, just constant numb and tingling feelings from the hips down, with the same nerve damage as when I woke up from surgery five years ago.

I describe year five as the year I bottomed out and bounced back with a vengeance.   In the fall, I found myself 30 lbs overweight, shuffling, hunched over, and missing all semblance of muscle tone everywhere on my body.  I looked in the mirror one day and I was old, frumpy, cranky, achy and unhappy. 

I realized that my 76 year old mother was ROCKING it ! and if I wanted to age like her, then I'd better start to act like her, disability be damned.

While I had acknowledged that I was using my disability as an excuse, I had to decide.  

Not overnight, but slowly I made the changes every professional will tell you you have to make - cut back on the booze, stop eating more than you burn, move your body!   If there is any "fortune" in it, I have the fortune of having a spinal cord injury that is incomplete. I can move.  I can walk, I can row, I can do spin classes, I can use weight machines, I can do crunches.  So what if I can't run, so what if I immediately fall off a fitness ball (and still fall off bar stools!), so what if I can't do 3/4 of the yoga poses. To not move because I'm lazy is to do a disservice to those who can't move at all.

It's taken months of discipline, but I have my pre-surgery-but-still-crippled body back and I feel alive.   Numb, tingly, and shoes still kill me ... but I feel alive.

I turn 50 soon.  Look out mom ... you have competition for who can rock it better :)

Thanks for listening
Sarah

(I managed to permanently lock myself out of the previous email address, so I have a new one.  sarahependymoma@gmail.com)