Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote:
Simple words like "try" have different meaning for someone who experiences an occasional ache and pain, and someone who goes to bed at night not knowing if they'll be able to walk in the morning, or pick up a pencil, or stand upright. They can't help but be different. That's why for me, my enduring measure of success is that I keep training. It's a very personal measure, but then, aren't they all? And isn't that what Mary E was getting at in creating this thread?
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What Mary said.
I can eat right, meditate, have all good thoughts, and adopt the best attitude possible about my structural problems. While all sorts of things certainly help on many levels, the underlying reality has this annoying habit of, well, not giving a rat's behind about all that. The spinal nerve roots being crushed simply keep on being crushed. Yeah, all sorts of ways of reducing inflammation (breakfast today was a veggie/fruit juice. Lunch will be mostly veggie juiced. Snacks will be lean proteins, mostly fish for the omega 3's, etc.). But these are all bandages on wounds that don't heal. A good friend of mine has long been crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. And honestly I look at him and realize how lucky I am that I'm still moving and not in his braced shoes. And he gets on with life, lives life, works hard, loves his wife, loves his family because in the end you're left with "well, this is the hand I've been dealt, time to get on with things." Inspirational to me.
And we have compared notes on people who like to offer up feel-good advice. I cannot count the number of things people have suggested I try for my back, many of which would aggravate it horribly. My friend and I agreed that mostly we smile when we hear this stuff because people simply do not know better. They don't understand. As Mary said, it's not a reality they get.
We all get old. We all get aches and pains. Hell, I get aches and pains too. But some conditions are different.
I used to give people advice about dealing with things like this. I probably received my share of polite smiles over the years. But once my spine started to show symptoms, well, I saw the other side of that coin. And I don't do that anymore.