All This Getting Healthy is Going to Kill Me!

I don’t want to end up using a cane or rolling around in a wheelchair.  If that’s my destiny, I will certainly accept it, but I won’t go down without a fight.  In addition to my fortitude on the issue of mobility, I’m enrolled in a new lifestyle improvement program at work called “HealthQuest.”  It’s a self-reporting summer program, whereby participants earn points towards various rewards for a variety of healthy lifestyle choices.  I can earn points for taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking instead of driving, exercising (of course), eating right, stepping away from my desk to de-stress, and even for making someone’s day.  Both motivating factors are excellent opportunities to get out of my office, move my legs, and strengthen my body.

That’s if I don’t die from trying to get healthy first.

A week or so ago, just days before my delayed infusion of Tysabri, a colleague and I decided to walk all the way around campus (just a mere 585 acres) to check out our campus beautification project.  I almost didn’t make it back to my office – red-faced, struggling to breathe and to move my legs — and I was in sorry shape the day after.  My colleague told another that she was worried she killed me on that walk.  Nah, the tightrope of imminent death is all apparently part of getting healthy.  An oxymoron at its finest!

I try to walk somewhere every day, yet it’s still just as much of a challenge at week eight of the program as it was at week one.  Of course, persons will M.S. will remind me that the 80-degree weather probably isn’t helping my cause any. 

At home, I try to spend 15 minutes – at least three or four nights a week – riding my XL Glider.  Any kind of movement is good movement, my doctors tell me.  It’s all supposed to be fighting off that dreaded muscle atrophy.  Add in the fruits and vegetables I’m trying to inhale, the giant glasses of water, and all that positive thinking and one might start to think I’m a reformed woman.

I write this as I’m about to lace up my sneakers, head out in the sticky and humid air, to walk to a meeting and then on to a healthy lunch.  I’ll return wobbly-legged to the office, earning 5 or 6 points in the process and hopefully even more points with the mobility gods.