For over two years now, getting close to three actually, I have fought to stay mobile and active and moving around. Sometimes the pain in my chest was so heavy that I would struggle to breathe as I went up a 50 foot climb behind my house. That lasted for several months and I got over that. When a virus got ahold of me it would set me back for a week or ten days, that happened several times. A year ago, a golfing instructor was teaching me how to swing through my hips and turn with the golf ball swing. I still feel pain from that day, mostly gone but a whole year to get back to some sort of base line. A week ago, one of my calf muscles went into spasms and severe pain. I’ve been healing from that, too slowly but at least some healing.
All the while, all these things really mess up my daily activities and routines. They are routines built around body movement and brain usage. The various pains or illnesses lay me up and make my brain too tired to use.
Now, it’s not like this every day, but enough of them to feel like it is. And it’s not as bad all the time as I made it sound, but bad enough to feel like it’s pretty bad. And yes, I’m way better than I was after my stroke.
It’s the ability to feel good and to move and to process that I appreciate so much these days because I’ve had days when I just didn’t have that mobility and thinkability. I’m not frightened easily but there have been some pretty frightful days. And much of it takes me away from having fun with my sweetheart as we walk every morning around the lake behind our home.
I had a feeling that hasn't’ gone away in the last three years. I call it the First Bite feeling. It’s like someone has been building up this wonderful food dish, a gastric event, which you’ve never had before or even imagined you would have. The food is prepared, you sit down, fork up, napkin tucked in, taste buds all firing and then you place that first morsel on your tongue and you savor it and it’s just wonderful.
I still have that First Bite feeling every day. I had a sandwich the day after my stroke and it was so good, unbelievably good. I had that same sandwich many hundreds of times before my stroke, but now, after the life changing event, every bite is a First Bite event. Years ago after a visit to the dentist where he had every size of pliers in my my mouth he could fit in there, I lost my sense of smell, and along with it, my sense of taste for over two months. I was never more miserable than those two months where I thought I might never taste corn on the cob or chocolate, or peach pie again. It frightened me a lot, depressed me a lot. But it came back. There wasn’t much I could do except wait for it to come back.
It’s the same way with mobility for the most part. I get pretty discouraged when I lose mobility because I am so crazy curious about what’s outside my front and back doors that I can’t stand being cooped up for more than a day or two. And that first moment when I can walk again, or shuffle up the hill is like a First Movement moment. I am so impatient for it, that I try too hard to make it come back before my body has healed enough and I end up causing more trouble for myself. I eventually heal, at least I always have in the past, but man, it sure is hard to wait.
At some point, in the next few days or week, I’ll be back at it, probably not skipping or dancing around the lake, but that First Movement moment is not far away. I can’t wait, as they say. I’m ready to get my mobility back, all the way back.