My daughter, writes of the battle for her health at her blog, which you will find linked
here. Please read her story. I half-heartedly started this blog 3 years ago, but listening to the trials and triumphs of her battle and seeing how much these stories encourage others, I decide to return to this blog and start over. You will see that we are as different as we are similar. I’m a vegetarian, earth hugging, buddhist and her lifestyle involves meat and christianity. But we were both active kids, love the outdoors, and most of all find the determination to succeed through the support of our friends, our faith, and our own self determination.
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I’d always biked as a kid and as an adult. While most moms put their babies in the car for a short ride to put them to sleep on a restless night, I put mine in a baby carrier on the back of my yellow Schwinn Continental that I bought with babysitting money back when I was 14. The bike is a tank, but it took me to every corner of Omaha. When I added the baby carrier, I used it to haul groceries. When I first started having chronic pain and fatigue, I began to feel less sure of myself on my bike. It’s a racing style, and I couldn’t bend my head without pain or turn my head to see the traffic behind me. I had fibromyalgia and not much hope for relief other than pills and less hope for continuing my favorite past-time of long bike rides.
I also liked backpacking and while carrying a backpack was out of the question, I could take long day hikes and daily power walks. I seemed to be doing better, until one day just a few yards short of the trailhead, I felt as though my hip couldn’t hold me up. A few weeks later, I found out that I had osteoarthritis and that my hip was worn down, probably needing a replacement in a few years. Through clinical pain management, injections, prescriptions, PT, pool therapy, and chiropractic care, I managed another year. Suddenly things were rapidly getting worse. I was using a cane, my posture was putting stress on my knees, I wore a knee braces, and I stopped sleeping. I began seeing an arthritis doctor who sent me to two different surgeons in Omaha who said I was too young for a hip replacement. I tried everything to get comfortable at night and function at work.
One night, I went to sleep thinking this just had to end. I woke up shimmied up to the head of the bed, literally scooting away from my pain. I could only think of stories of wild animals chewing off their own legs to escape a trap. I closed my eyes thinking, “somebody help me.” I dreamed I was visiting a healer I knew. I was in his kitchen and the family was busy getting ready to go to work and school. He told me I need marshmallow and I would find it in my kitchen. Then he said next time I stopped by he wanted to check the tires on my car. I woke up thinking I don’t have marshmallow and why am I dreaming about my car. Still desperately in pain, I searched through herbs in the kitchen. Finally, I opened the cupboard where I kept several teas and found it. It was an ingredient in a tea for sore throats and I knew nothing about it. I made a compress and drank a cup of tea for good measure and fell asleep. I woke up suddenly remembering the doctor I had seen two years earlier who first said I would someday need a replacement. I decided it was someday. I was scheduled for surgery within a few weeks, and just for good measure decided to have my car looked at. The brakes were shot and so were the tires.
By the time I went to surgery, I was in a walker and now had spondylolysis, another type of arthritis that was mostly affecting my fingers and toes. I also had used up my PT benefits for the year. After surgery, the staff taught me my PT routine and sent me home with some printouts. My friends helped me get in and out of bed and the shower and helped with my PT until I was able to walk up and down the stairs and up the street to my mailbox and back. As winter was ending, they convinced me that I could cycle again. I climbed on one friend’s bike while another held the bike, the way my parents did when I was first learning to bike. I was terrified and realized I would have to overcome this fear. Another of our friends had had a stroke six months prior to my surgery. Together we went bike shopping to find bikes that we could get on and off from with our disabilities.
We both bought Trek step through bikes, added big cushy seats, mirrors and a basket. I could sit up avoiding neck pain, and after a few short rides, I started gaining strength and distance. I hung on every word of Lance Armstrong’s recovery. The following summer 2007, I prepared for my first bike tour 350 miles in 5 days. My Trek Navigator is not a road bike. It’s a tooling around town bike. But despite everyones’ doubts, I made it through the tour, very late at the end of each day, but I made it each and every day to the end of that first tour.
