Grateful to be okay

Well, if there’s anything I can say I learned last week week (in addition to chiropractors are dangerous), it’s this:

How very, very grateful I am not to have a permanent nerve injury.

I guess that’s sort of the obvious thing for anyone to say in this situation.  But what really surprised me was that my biggest fear was not how difficult daily life was going to be if my nerve issues turned out to be permanent.

Instead, what scared me the most was that I might have to give up my chosen career– or, at least, not be able to do it in the way that I want.

It was sort of a reminder for me, in a way, of how much I really want to become a physical therapist.  Because in my daily life, I often get bogged down in the practicalities.  The few remaining prerequisites I would need to take in order to apply to certain programs.  Taking the GRE (again, that is– let’s not talk about how I scored the first time!).

Last Friday, I consulted a neurologist, and was very encouraged by what she said.  On the way home, I stopped in the town of Newburyport, Mass., which is always one of my favorite places to go in the summer.

I could feel my body telling me it was okay to move, that it was okay to start using my legs again.  So I walked around and took in the sunset, gathering my thoughts.

And I was just sort of thinking of everything I’ve been working on so far– my classes, my blog, my Youtube channel (I have so many ideas for videos I mean to make!).

And of course, the e-book I’ve been working on– Exercises for the Sacroiliac Joint.  It will be quite a bit easier to get back into concentrating on that, now that the question of whether I’ll be partially paralyzed for the rest of my life has been taken off the table.

As I have said before, I don’t necessarily think everything happens for a reason.  But as my friend Nicole told me once, “You can make meaning out of things for yourself.”

So there a few lessons I can draw from what happened:

1) I need to explore alternatives to chiropractic adjustments.  Who knows where this will take me?  Maybe I’ll discover something even better, something that will benefit my future patients and make me a better PT.

2) I have such a better understanding now of what it feels like to have nerve damage.  Before, it was something I only could imagine.  Now I have felt it– thankfully, only for about a week.

And 3) What a reminder of how much I really do want to do this.  I want to teach people, I want to educate (and thank God I’ll still be able to use my own body as a tool to do so with).

Sometimes I feel myself get slowed down by the demands of daily life, and the things I have to do just to get into school.   So in a way, it was quite the wake-up call to get in touch with the fear I had, at the thought it could be taken away.

So now, I am grateful to be okay, and it is back to business.