Walking: A Thing of the Past

Walk­ing: A Thing of the Past

When the tumors appeared in my legs last June, I never imag­ined it would lead to me not walk­ing. As the tumors became more and more painful, it started creep­ing into my mind that it was a pos­si­bil­ity. I talked to my phys­i­cal ther­a­pists about doing every­thing pos­si­ble to keep me walk­ing and for a while we were suc­cess­ful at keep­ing me upright. I hob­bled along with a cane, tried using a walker (and failed), func­tioned with a wheel­chair part-time, and now walk­ing is a thing of the past.

From the moment we take our first steps in life, walk­ing is a learned skill that is seem­ingly invalu­able. Our par­ents mar­vel at the sight and as a child you can’t help but bask in the glory of cham­pi­oning such an awe inspir­ing feat. Once the sta­bil­ity arrives, being upright is the only way to go. This just rein­forces my frus­tra­tions of not being able to walk.

When you are healthy per­son, you never imag­ine not being able to walk. We walk almost every­where we go and we most def­i­nitely take it for granted. This is espe­cially true when I would meet some­one who was ill or hand­i­capped who were unable to walk. I would feel ter­ri­ble for them! How do you do things? Does it hurt? These are ques­tions I would ask, but the answers would always go right over my head. Wish I would have listened…

Now, I’m fac­ing my own chal­lenges. For instance, a few weeks ago, I was trans­fer­ring out of our vehi­cle into my elec­tric scooter when my hand slipped caus­ing my head to hit the door. This caused a chain reac­tion of my head snap­ping back and the left side of my head smash­ing into the frame of the car, knock­ing me out cold. This is not com­mon­place when you’re able to walk.

I under­stand my med­ical sit­u­a­tion is very unique and find­ing doc­tors who have ever dealt with this kind of expo­sure to tox­ins is nearly impos­si­ble, but I would love to be able to walk again. I am still doing phys­i­cal ther­apy at home which is keep­ing the mus­cles around my knees strong, but the pain has left me a long ways from walking.

My wife and I will con­tinue to pray that a doc­tor gets put into my path. No mat­ter what hap­pens, I’m thank­ful every­day that I’m still alive and I’ll be stay­ing pos­i­tive as long as God con­tin­ues to bless me with life.