Yeah! I made it. Another birthday. Another year.
But it is getting harder to hang in there.

I am falling behind in the race to survive. I want to walk as far as my feet will carry me, sing as loud as my voice will rise and write as fast as I can before I am gone.

From the top of my skull to the tip of my toes, my body has taken a beating. But, I keep waving the warrior flag and drawing on the strength of my ancestors. I could have, should have, would have died after a rabid skunk bite as a toddler, after a neck breaking fall off a bicycle in Germany, after flipping out of a car speeding down the freeway in France, after splitting my skull in a bad fall at home in Switzerland.

Yet, for some reason, I am still here for another spin around the sun!

Ever the great pretender, I fake my way forward — tackling Lyme’s disease, environmental illness and more accidents than I can count.

I endure physical ailments with self-discipline and endless rehabilitation - physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, massage, heat, ice and talk therapy.

I fought back from broken bones, but how do you recover from a busted brain?

How do I manage a mind that misfires from damage to the frontal lobe, the mastermind that pulls the strings in the back of the brain that fulfills all human functions?

For the past five years, unable to filter sounds, lights, voices, commotion and to curtail the cacophony of background noise that is the essence of life, I hide in a dark, quiet room. I avoid the masses and loud places - stores, arenas, theaters, restaurants, events and situations that create sensory overload.

I wanted to give up. The Functional Neurology Center gave me hope. After their high- tech diagnosis, I attended an intensive week of therapy, a Boot Camp for the brain.

I rode in my “space ship,” the GyroStim. It’s a state of the art, multi-axis rotating chair that works with balance, cognitive and sensory integration and affects proprioception. I underwent Virtual Reality training to rehabilitate balance dysfunction. I zapped pain with Accelerated Recovery and Performance (ARPWave) Neurotherapy and Cranial low level laser treatments. I repeated exercises, inhaled Molecular Hydrogen and completed therapies so bizarre, it felt like sci-fi.

I learned our brains are marvelous mysteries; specialists are understanding more about neuroplasticity every day. FNC is the way of the future.

“Neuroplasticity is the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections after injuries, such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI)".

As I struggle to retrain my left side, jump start my cerebellum, and control my frontal lobe, I work just as hard to reset my attitude.

I am an athlete. I may be broken down, worn-out, defective, but I still “run.”

I accept that I may be in training forever in the only game that matters - life.

With age, injury and illness the body weakens, but the spirit grows strong. I get fed up living in this shit shell of a body, but by golly my soul shines on.

In my dance with death, I appreciate better than most that I am living on borrowed time - we all are.

I should be 6 feet under, instead when dawn breaks every morning, I take a deep breath and whisper, “I am strong. I am grateful. I am here.”