Still Walking. A Team Danica-Monica Update

At home
I still walk.
Doctors, looking
down at me, say
YOUR SPINE IS DISINTEGRATING,
STAY IN THE WHEELCHAIR OR ELSE.
Or else what? I’ll never walk again?
Never stand up? Of that
I am not afraid.
I am afraid
of sitting down
for the last time.

For now
I still walk at home.
Nothing fast, nothing fancy,
Nothing but one foot in front of the other,
Which is everything, really,
Everything if you appreciate
the shift of weight from heel
to toe, the way your arches
sigh into the carpet, and
the small dance that happens
when you just stand still.–Lynn Goldfarb

I searched for a stock image of a younger person using a walker. One in a medical institution would have worked, but I really wanted one outdoors, maybe a young woman like me walking in the sun and leaves. There were hundreds of photos of older people with someone caring beside them helping them take each next step. There were no photos of a forty year old wife and mama gripping a metal support with wheels praying each step will take her closer to restoration.

In a way it’s sad I don’t write much during the several weeks between major surgeries and days like today when the fog begins to clear, and I’m able to process the pain and grief I’ve endured. I know I’ve lost wise things, and I’m sure I’ve buried others. This is how we survive any recurring trauma isn’t it?

Twenty-four. It’s a lot of anything. It’s a crazy amount of wounding.

I felt afraid. This terror was new and different. Fear is rarely part of these operations anymore. My pain becomes a place I’d rather die than keep living. I get a scan, see the new damage and mark the date on a calendar. I don’t ask myself how many patch jobs we can do before my spine disintegrates. This time as I woke from anesthesia I wondered if we’d gone too far. I had oxygen, but I couldn’t breathe. If I stayed awake I could make myself take breaths, but I was under the plastic bag of too many drugs. I just wanted to sleep. Every time I fell asleep I stopped breathing. An alarm would sound. I’d jerk awake. The nurse would remind me, “BREATHE.”

There was something about the way my body was positioned during this surgery that completely ruined my hips. The op notes are vague. I know part of the pain and inability to walk alone was from the bone marrow aspiration from my right hip. Once we moved to the hotel my sister and sister-in-law would help me to the bathroom. I felt my legs dragging behind me as I held onto the walker for dear life. There were burgundy stripes in the hotel floor, and they became like little mile markers for my marathon.

I’m grateful for hard fought battles won. I’m thankful for the scars, new and old alike. They are my beauty marks.

I won’t JUST sit in a chair.
Not even my “nest” chair.
I will put one foot in front of another.
Which is everything really.
It’s everything.