Keep Walking

“I considered my options
There was only one I knew
There was always only one.

To keep walking.”

from Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

So simple, yet so profound. Trapped in my royal blue funk, regretting, lamenting, mourning for all the things I can no longer do, I take comfort in the words of a woman who walked the Pacific North Trail solo and chronicled her journey in her best selling memoir Wild.

I can’t ski, skate, bike, play basketball, or pickle ball or any kind of ball game. I can’t hop, skip, or jump. But I can stand tall. Shoulders back, chin up, head high. I can put one foot in front of the other.

Why is that so hard to do? I feel like rigor mortis set in while I sleep. When I wake up each morning, I am caught by surprise. So I roll out of bed, crawl onto my yoga mat, stretch my stiff limbs and marvel.

I am still here.

Alive.

Each new day is a clean slate. A chance to get it right.

I remember to smile, be kind, offer encouragement. Someone else is in much worse shape, facing far greater trials, struggling to survive in tougher circumstances.

Today I had an epiphany.

I am an athlete. Still. Only now I am training for life.
Though I will never again play my beloved ball games, I can raise my arms, clap my hands, stomp my feet, wiggle my hips, shake my booty. I can still dance.

I inherited the iron will of my ancestors whose footprints I try so hard to emulate in spite of setbacks.

My father and grandfather, good sportsmen, great coaches, dedicated their lives to helping others find their way and offered me stellar examples of resiliency. They remained athletes at heart, determined to stay as active as their bodies would allow until their final hours.

I can still move.

I may be slower, stiffer, clumsier, but I can sit, stand and even roll over like Rover.

I’m lucky to be here!

Right now.

Today.

We, human beings, take so much for granted until it’s gone.

Aging can be a losing game. Combined with bad luck, terrible accidents, and bizarre ailments, no one can perceive what challenges await.

Today is our only guarantee.

Seize the moment.

Be brave enough to take another step.

As a child I hated to walk, I would rather run. Walking was too slow, too boring. Now walking saves my soul.

We are all just walking and walking, trying our best to find our way.

To stay the course.

To step forward.

To believe.

Eventually all roads lead to the mountaintop.

If the Global Pandemic is Over Why Do I Still Have COVID?

Every action from brushing my teeth, to getting dressed, to sitting at the table wears me out. I have muscle aches, headaches, air hunger, tightness in the chest, and shortness of breath. I force myself to walk everyday gasping for air at every incline as though I have run up the mountain.

My doctors surmised that I have lingering COVID or what is called long haul COVID. The illness also robbed me of my sense of taste and smell. How cruel, especially when I have the great fortune of being married to a French chef. Yet in comparison to others, my complaints are minor.

In August, our son contracted COVID and he suggested we test. My husband, who barely felt ill, tested positive. I had all the symptoms, but tested negative until 5 days later.

Luckily, I have an expert resource for up to date, accurate information about COVID. My friend, Jono Quick, is a public health specialist, who dedicated his career to focusing on global health security. An internationally known global health leader, Jonathan (“Jono”) D. Quick, MD, MPH wrote in 2018 The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It that eerily forecasted this dreadful fallout of a pandemic. The former director of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva was part of Dr. Fauci’s think tank committee at the outbreak of the COVID epidemic.

In August, when I tested positive, I called him. “Over half the population has the virus and is asymptomatic,” he told me, “Or they mistakenly believe it is only the common cold.”

He emphasized the importance of isolation during the illness and protecting others. Misconceptions abound making this issue more confusing.There is so much we don’t understand yet, COVID has only been here for 2 years, which is a very short period for scientific knowledge.

How do we protect ourselves and others when the guidelines keep changing?

Dr. Quick stated that these recommendations still hold true.

Mask up! But only KN95 or N95 masks are efficient against Omicron.
Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate - the virus hangs around indoors.
Respect a safe a distance in public spaces
Remember that the risk is higher if your immune system is weaker. Even if you already had Omicron and have been vaccinated, you still risk getting it again, because immunity wanes over time.
Keep your vaccine updated. The good news is that the vaccine protects you against the most severe forms of the illness.

People are sick of COVID protocols. With lower viral levels during the summer months, European countries lifted flying bans and border entry restrictions. Everyone enjoyed more freedom to travel, but it has never been without risks. With winter approaching, experts sound alarms again. If the rising European rates are a forewarning, as they have been in the past, Americans could be next.

Omicron BA. 4/5 variants plagued us this summer, but the WHO has been continually tracking hundreds of new variants. An 8th wave of infections threatens the European continent. A new variant labeled Centaure, first discovered in India and recently identified here, could hit hard this winter

What about patients like me with immunocompromised systems that still suffer from symptoms?

A recent Scottish study, one of the largest on long COVID, found that nearly half of COVID cases had not fully recovered more than six months after the infection.

According to my neurologist and ENT in Switzerland, the low energy, loss of taste and smell can take up to 18 months to recover from.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have noted rising COVID cases and hospitalization across Europe.

Pretending it doesn’t matter because cases are milder now than before is a lame excuse. COVID exposure is like playing Russian roulette. Depending on one’s age, immune system status and other extenuating health circumstances, the results of an infection can be catastrophic and even deadly.

Most members of my immediate family have had milder cases of COVID, but I have lost 2 uncles, (in the USA and France) to this horrible disease. I struggle to fully recover after 3 months; my French sister-in-law still battles complications of post COVID lung inflammation.

America prides itself on freedom, which we all value. But how can the right to carry a gun in public be more widely tolerated than accepting the “inconvenience” of wearing a mask to help prevent oneself and others from contracting a life threatening illness?

Please don’t criticize, belittle or judge anyone who chooses to adhere the guidelines that we cannot afford to ignore.

“Error on the side of caution,” Dr. Quick suggested. “Don’t take risks. Don’t compromise safety yourself or others.”

Cancer Stole My Friend Too Soon

My friend died last weekend. My heart is heavy. Christine was such a beautiful soul. Thoughtful, kind, warmhearted. Far too young to part already. She leaves behind 3 children - beautiful reflections of herself -whom I had the privilege of teaching.

Cancer crept up insidiously. She had shortness of breath. She felt run down.

Aren’t all dedicated teachers?

She left school one day for a doctor’s appointment; she never came back to class. Instead she went to war in the cancer ward. The diagnosis. The deception. The despair. The carnage. The crusade.

She fought her battle against leukemia so gallantly. After the first rounds of hospitalizations and chemotherapy, she went into remission. When cancer reared its ugly head again, she returned to battle. Her sister selflessly donated her bone marrow for a replacement. More hospitalizations. More isolation. More pain. More anxiety. More anguish.

How hard to believe you are getting better when your body weakens from the endless fight?

All that effort bought her a little more time before she succumbed to an infection that attacked her heart. Her heart. Her generous, loving heart.

Who among us has never lost a loved one to disease?

Cancer is especially cruel. It attacks the self. It can only be beat-sometimes just temporarily - by knocking out the immune system leaving the victim vulnerable to the very air breathed.

She left us with a bittersweet reminder we only have today. And treasured memories.

I have so many. She once baked my favorite carrot cake and brought it to our department meeting for my birthday. When I couldn’t drive, she picked me and took me to one of my retirement parties. Years later, wearing a knitted cap to hide her bald head, she swooped in to carry me off for coffee where we lamented our fight to survive.

After my brain surgery, I looked to her for inspiration. I saw how hard she fought with so much grace and dignity. I thought if she can prevail, so can I. And so we faced another day.

Until we didn’t.

Now she is no longer here. A good person gone too soon. I never had the chance to say goodbye.

She lent me books and lesson plans, shared smiles and stories, offered rides and meals. She gave me laughter and joy.

She brightened my days.

Now I mourn for her children, her husband, her sister, her parents, her colleagues and friends, all who feel her passing as an ache that will not subside.

I miss her already.

Rest in peace dear friend.

You left behind the best kind of legacy.

You were greatly loved.

I am turning 65, still alive and skiing again

After my car accident at age 25 doctors feared I’d never walk again, after brain surgery nearly 40 years later, they thought I would be lucky to use my limbs properly.

After countless hours of medical treatments, therapy and hard work, I cross-country skied again. I fell in love with the sport, inspired by my Scandinavians ancestors, who invented cross-country skiing centuries ago to circulate across mountains in winter. It reminds me of my forefathers born on the fjords in Northern Norway where reindeer run wild and Laplanders reign, where nature and its preservation is a God given right and obligation.

I was never an adept skier. I am even worse now. From a distance I look more like a wobbly stork than a Scandinavian savant. I huff and puff around each bend. I remove my skis when I can non longer duck waddle up the steep incline. My fear of falling defeats the fun of gliding downhill. I also take my skiis off to walk down any incline. At sharp bends at the end of slopes, I collapse sideways halfway down the slope. Better to fall gently, but awkwardly on my own terms, then crashing out of control.

I spend a lot of time putting on and taking off skiis. But that is the beauty of cross country. Everyone can go at their own pace.

When I moved to Switzerland, the land of ski, no one believed me when I told them, I don’t know how to ski. I have reached an age where I am afraid to try downhill, not so much due to my numerical age, but to my spinal age from years of abusing my body on a basketball court, a bike accident, a car accident left me ever feisty, yet fragile.

I can still remember the first time I went skiing with a teammate on the golf course of Illinois State University. I’ll never forget the wrath of my coach when I came to practice with a twisted knee after tumbling down the slope on the 9th hole.

Skiing for a DI basketball players may be taboo in Illinois, but not in Switzerland. The basketball season takes a back seat to ski season. When my star Swedish center insisted on hitting the slopes a week before our European championship, I went ballistic.

“Don’t worry Coach, “ she assured, patting me on the back, “I never get hurt. I was born on skiis. To me it is as natural as breathing.”

That maybe true for some Scandinavians, but to those ancestors of immigrants, it is still a challenge.

Yet, when I glide around another hairpin turn, my shoulders pull on poles propelling me forward, mountains whiz past in my peripheral vision, and I feel euphoric. As I weave through the fresh powder in forests full of snow sprinkled evergreen, I hear the call of a coyote and inhale the crisp, clear mountain air.

And I feel lucky to be alive.

Never mind that an hour later, my muscles will lock up from the pain of fibromyalgia. Knots will form in shoulders. My neck, hips and low back will ache. Knifes will stab my knees every step I take. I will lie flat - a hot water bottle on my upper back and ice packs on my knees - and close my eyes. I see a sheer, jagged mountain peek pointing toward turquoise skies, icicles hanging from the rooftops of red shuttered wooden chalets in an incredibly beautiful tableau of whiteness. I am blessed to be here in the land of mountains and water where the skies meet the heavens in Switzerland.

Fixing A Crooked Spine, Fighting Chronic Pain

After a 5 hour brain surgery, 6 weeks of hopitalization and 15 months of therapy, I started over again retraining my muscle memory to better spine aligment. Swiss neurosurgeons successfully treated my major brain injury, but had no clue how to help me with my back. Fifteen months later, due to COVID constraints, I was finally allowed to enter the USA. I began intensive therapy to treat injury my body incurred in that bad, bad fall that cracked my skull.

I began treatment with Dr. David Draeger, my guru, a gifted chiropractor in northern Wisconsin. A full set of back x-ray revealed what could not be seen with naked eye, but helped clarify why I couldn’t walk without pain between my shoulder blades, low back, right hip, knee, and heel.

Dr. Dave worked with me to ameliorate bilateral shoulder impingement, scapula dysfunction, rib dislocation, compressed thoracic disks on top of a longstanding chronic low back pain. Chiropractic adjustments included a half dozen on the wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, ankles and heels. The physical manipulation helped restore mobility to joints whose motion was restricted by tissue injury caused by a traumatic event.

“I feel awful,” I complained to him.

“No wonder,” Dr. Dave said. “We are restructuring your skeletal system.”

To move forward, I had to go backwards, and forgo any swimming, guitar playing, blog writing, and movements with my arms. Then step by step, I retrained my muscle memory by walking.

Determined to keep moving, I resorted to water walking. I’d wade out above my waist up to neck in the cold lake and pace back and forth out beyond our raft. While the water iced my muscles, the tranquil view of the lake and woods inspired me and an eagle soaring overhead rooted me on.

Additional therapy with Dr. D, included a combination of intense treatments; electrical impulse therapy to help break up scar tissue, high intensity heat therapy and AtlasPROfilax therapy to improve posture and shoulder alignment and help alleviate chronic pain.

AtlasPROfilax, a neuromuscular massage technique, which applies vibro pressure and massages the short neck muscles, remains an effective way to treat C1 (atlas) cervical vertebra. Unfortunately, although developed in 1995 by a Swiss Doctor, René C. Schümperli, I am unable to find a practitioner in the part of Switzerland where we live.

High Intensity Laser Therapy (HILT) delivers healing light energy to the cells of the body that penetrates through bone, soft tissue, and muscle. HILT can reduce pain, minimize swelling, soften scar tissue, and reset the chronic pain cycle – all while healing damaged tissues at the cellular level.

None of this is a quick fix. It requires a long term commitment and a dedicated doctor. Willingness to accept pain as part of the healing process and acknowledging my own role in recovery is paramount.

Recovery became a team effort. I followed Dr. D’s orders to the letter and did whatever was possible to build strength within parameters he set. Restoring good posture required retraining muscle memory one step at a time.

Dr. Dave credits his older brother, Curt, with encouraging him to enter the chiropractor profession and with teaching him new techniques. Known for working with elite Olympian athletes and Greenbay Packer football stars, Dr. Curt also worked with physicists to develop the latest generation of high intensity lasers that are much stronger and penetrate tissue at deeper levels.

Dr. Dave’s clinic is tucked away deep in the Northwoods of Wisconsin at Eagle River. There he is surrounded by a loyal, hardworking staff and technicians creating a formidable team who exemplify his belief in helping people by trying to accommodate every patient in his overbooked schedule.

Dr. Dave is not only a gifted healer with a warm, engaging, positive personality, but his genuine desire to help people is second to none. I know of no other doctor who makes house calls. Once, he showed up at our summer cabin in the woods, popped out his portable table and adjusted the entire family. For free.

To Dr. Dave, chiropractic care in not just a career, it’s a calling. He makes the world a better place by helping alleviate pain and inspiring hope one spine at a time.

Finding a New Path – Beginning Again

The past 6 months have been a blur of pain, disappointment, anxiety, uncertainty and ongoing rehabilitation. I have been off line, out of touch, and unable to write due to doctors orders. I had to refrain from using my upper body while retraining muscle memory.

I am lost. Unbalanced mentally and physically.

My sister will remind me I have been in an existential crisis since age 13, but this time I am really floundering. The parameters measuring my identity disappeared. Studies by Bruce Feiler in his book “Life is in the Transitions, Mastering Change at Any Age,” upended previous beliefs that defined age in stages as popularized by Gail Sheehy 1970s best seller “Passages.”

Transitions never existed in a linear, set pattern, but our chaotic lives are more like a kaleidoscope of constant change. We go through 20 or more transitions in a lifetime and major ones every 3 to 4 years.

For stability we all need to have at least one of three things.

Purpose
Connection
Community

I lack all three. My purpose used to be teaching, coaching, writing, raising a family. My basketball teams and family were my connections; the international school was my community. But my children outgrew me, as they should, I retired from teaching/coaching and my family remains 4,000 miles away.

This summer, though I was so grateful to see loved ones, I felt as displaced as ever, at odds with my body, emotions running rampant due to the lingering after effects of brain injury.

As with any long term recovery process, setbacks, disappointments and false starts prevailed.

The skills I once performed effortlessly disappeared. I relearned how to do things for myself - drive long distances, pack the car, buy groceries, fill the tank, mow the lawn.

I have been working so hard to recover from traumatic brain injury after a bad fall that wreaked as much havoc with my spine as it did my brain. Once stateside, I spent 6 months, moving between families’ homes in Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin and underwent intensive therapy for my back and shoulders.

Back track 9 months. Last April, we sold our house outside Geneva Switzerland and bought a place in St. Cergue in the Jura Mountains. The only problem - the new virtual house was not built yet. No worries, realtors assured us only a few months delay. Further snafus in building means we will remain without fixed domicile for another year.

Mid January we returned to Switzerland and landed back in time in our “Heidi hut.” a rented, rustic chalet, chiseled out of the mountainside and heated only by wood burning stove.

I feel completely uprooted, a stranger in my body, living in a foreign place, surrounded by people I don’t know.

Without a permanent address it is hard to feel grounded.

During my lowest point, at age 26 after my career ending car accident abroad, I thought I had nothing left to give, but I never gave up believing and went on to teach and coach and raise a family. In retrospect, I can see that I still had a lot left to offer and learn from others.

But now what?

This time around, in a later stage of my life without a real home, our rootlessness existence makes it so much harder to reinvent myself, accept my limited options and admit my loss of autonomy.

Yet, every morning when I throw open the shutters, the sun sparkles over the snow-covered mountain top daring me to step out the door on the next adventure.

So here we go…

“One day at a time…remember all that lies behind you,
Believe in all that lies ahead”