Learning to walk (again).

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that the last few posts have been focused on a recent medical procedure, parts of my life with cerebral palsy and many affects in the last few months. While CP certainly is NOT the whole of my identity, it is a never-hidden part of who I am. This season is both rich and frustrating with the focus on CP and my own need for self-compassion.

My body has healed from the pump implantation. We are finally, after about 6 weeks, getting the level of baclofen in the pump to the correct level for me. I am figuring out this new normal and even had my first pump refill.

While there are so many victories in those sentences, I have always promised myself that this blog would not be inauthentic. So, if I may, here is the difficult truth….

I am both so grateful for the decreased spasticity that this pump affords me, every day. I am still in awe. And, it is so hard, learning to walk again.

These muscles were very accustomed to being rigid, painful and walking as such. Although painful, for at least 49 of my 51 years, I have been walking on those muscles.

When I had the test dose in January, along with the joy of released spasticity, was the realization that these “relaxed” muscles were a whole different ball game than those I always known. It was easy in the surprise and happiness of feeling less pain to say, “oh, yes, learning to walk again, no problem!” It’s funny how we do that. New Year’s resolutions, painting a room an ambitious design, even changing life style habits. Initially, the things we view as good change can be “exciting, until reality sets in and change reminds us, “Um, this is very unfamiliar and I am not keen on that.”

The reality of these “new but same” muscles is that they just flat out do not know how to walk, function or move the same way they used to. The consistent drip from the pump makes them much more relaxed and thus, when my brain asks them to move, it feels like it takes even longer for the message to get there from my brain. Between that and my brain not quite trusting this “relaxed set of muscles,” there is a lot of coaxing, thinking and prodding a body that feels better but is so unfamiliar. I am leaning on assistive aids more than I ever have which again, is both good and hard. The good is the stability my walking stick provides, (plus it is just badass; hand carved and cool!) and the hard is the feeling so out of my own element.

A couple weeks ago as I carried a cereal bowl into the kitchen, my feet somehow tangled and I found myself crashing hard on our laminate floor. Thankfully, I was not detrimentally hurt, (a small bump on my head and knees) but my pride took a hit. I feel like the toddler I saw recently while in Chicago by the pool. She gripped her daddy’s hand as she wobbled, slipped and marched in an effort to learn how to walk independently. “I’m with you, girlie girl,” I thought under my breath.

I feel herky-jerky, nervous and sore. My body is overcompensating for all the changes going on, so that makes parts of me hurt that never have before. I vacillate between being frustrated with this body, putting too much pressure on myself and remembering that does not help anything and trying to be kind. I will tell you this though…. I am envious of that toddler who will not remember trying, falling and trying again to walk at her age. (Kids also “bounce” when they fall far more than ahem, 50-year-olds… ).

That is the hard right now, trying desperately to be kind and patient with myself while being incredibly grateful for the gift of this pump, relief and hope. It all actually goes hand in hand.

Can you relate? Being honest (human) and grateful can be a really, really hard both/and.

I hope in my sharing, there is further permission to share your own hard both/and with a trusted loved one. I pray you are loved and reassured, that you feel hope to keep going in the good and hard changes. I pray most of all you feel the reassuring presence of God.

I would be lost without that myself.

I am rooting you on,

Xoxo

Both/and

Psalm  16:9