This week, I spoke with a patient with a condition that is difficult in a way mine aren’t, and they made me think. They were always active, but as their condition progressed, they had to ease off some of their favorite sports because the symptoms of their condition physically shut them down. They are particularly competitive, and stepping back upset them, but they had certain things they love they just weren’t willing to give up for the condition. That was their red line.
As we spoke, I thought about how I had never reached that level of active, even at my healthiest. It just wasn’t something our family pushed. We were more used bookstores and cooking together than outdoors and competing. Although, I did attempt my fair share of sports when I was young: riding, swimming, skating, gymnastics.
But even then, my chosen sports were never things I spent a lot of time on outside of lessons and practices.
As an adult, I tried to hang on to some form of activity through personal trainers and gyms, but it was always a chore, and I regularly rationalized my way out of it. Since COVID, I have been virtually sedentary. Even my minimal efforts have backslid.
This is not good. All my conditions do better with exercise, both aerobic and anaerobic, and my body has been making its dissatisfaction known with increases in exhaustion level, a strained left shoulder, and worsening chronic nausea. (I suspect that lack of exercise is contributing to this, but I can’t prove it.)
During that earlier conversation, I found myself admiring the other patient’s drive and wishing I could be more like them. They are much older than I with symptoms that greatly and immediately affect high levels of activity. Yes, I have to watch blood sugar, and my joints and muscles have become a bit creaky, but that is not the same level of challenge as this other patient’s symptoms.
Then it struck me.
Activity is a privilege.
Not everyone has a range of movement that allows exercise.
I have been in a wheelchair. I have been sidelined by the pain of dying nerves in my feet.
I recovered. And not only had I recovered, the second loss of mobility and the fear of what that could mean for the future had been the driving forces behind yanking myself out of noncompliance. Back then, I held on to what I almost lost (twice) with both hands.
How could I have forgotten?
I’m not big on New Years’ Resolutions. My psyche uses them to set me up for failure – there’s nothing it likes better than a good rebellion, even if it’s against myself. But maybe it’s time for a bit of a paradigm change. Well, a return to an old mindset, anyway.
Maybe if I can start to think of exercise as something that is mine, that my conditions haven’t been able to yank away from me yet, it will feel less like a chore and more like the privilege it is.