It's April. April always makes me think of the April I was packing up to go home after my first (and only as of right now) semester at college. In my head that wasn't so long ago but in actuality its been four years. Isn't it crazy how our minds freeze frame sometimes? Here's an example that I've encountered as I've been doing physical therapy; as I do the exercises I think "oh this should be easy" but when I try I can hardly do it the first time. My mind still thinks of me as a fit athletic person. When I say that out loud it makes no sense because I have had chronic symptoms all my life, so why would I think of myself as athletic? Well there was a small portion of my life that one of my besties and I would go to the gym and I loved it. There was even one Saturday that we ran the equivalent of a half marathon on the track at the gym. I even had pretty toned arms from driving a car without power steering. Something in the back of my head has always thought of this sick part of my life as a "phase". That all the sickness, pain, fainting, and mostly the being bedridden would pass and I would be okay. Though this thought was NOT always at the forefront of my mind it was always there, sometimes buried, but there none the less. And guess what? I was right.
This is not to say that I'm magically better or that today hasn't been hard, but I am okay. I think thinking of myself as the fit, gym going girl I once was helped me pull out of where I was months ago. I've been saying for a few years to my parents, "I just need a leg up. A little bit of help so my body doesn't try and kill me. I can do all the hard work after that myself.". Well I got that leg up, with the medications I'm on now and even more importantly with physical therapy. I needed someone who understood the physiology of my conditions in conjunction with exercising. In the past I would exercise and get intense chest pain, coughing until I could hardly breathe and pass out. I knew that exercise was what would help me the most but if it killed me in the process I couldn't really get myself motivated to do it haha. The huge change with physical therapy is that I CAN exercise now because I start out laying down. Peddling while laying down for a couple minutes increases your preload, which means you then have enough blood flow to sit up and do the recumbent bike for a few minutes. Following that with a couple more minutes laying down and you're golden.
As I've been doing physical therapy the past two months its lead to so much more functionality over all. I even upped my Fitbit step goal to 2,300 and I've been getting that and then some most days. In the last couple weeks there has probably only been one or two days that I have spent the whole day in bed, other than that I'm trying to be up and around more. Even if that means dragging a folding chair around with me so I can sit instead of stand, my world has gotten so much bigger than my four bedroom walls. I have been doing a lot of cleaning and dejunking with this new found energy. Sounds like a weird thing to be excited about after being stuck in bed for so long but I've got to tell you I love getting rid of stuff. I love organizing things and seeing them all in there specific places. I love getting things done and I love planning new projects. And when I'm all tired out from cleaning I knit. I just finished knitting six bunny softies for a neighbor to give to her great-grandbabies for Easter, which was fun.
The only problem I have found with getting better is I want everyday to be better than the last and sometimes its not that simple. I've been waiting years, no decades, for someone to explain to me what is happening with my body and better yet, how to manage it. And now I have doctors who can. Even if the road to managing it is hard, I can do it. I don't need easy, I just need possible. And it is. It is now possible;)
