I used to think I was fortunate in that I didn't have major hang-ups about my body. I've always liked it, and it's served me well in the sex department. However, that's a good and functional coping mechanism for what happened when I was a kid, and now overall as I age.
From age 3, I was sick a lot. Various things, mostly "normal childhood diseases." But I did somehow get hepatitis when I was 3, and then I had strep about every three months for a number of years. I remember getting measles and mumps. Measles - "both kinds" I recall my mother saying. I did not die. People get vaccines for these things now. But still, I was sick a lot.
When the polio vaccine came out, there were two version of that. Live and killed. Polio had been killing people, and injuring them for some 30 years in this country, and it was believed to be a miracle from somewhere... so sure, line 'em up and vax 'em down! Except no one in the military (I'm a military brat) heeded the precaution that those with weakened immune systems might not be good candidates for the vaccine. No, it was soldier up and take the medicine.
So, I got vaccine-dogpiled. And got polio from the vaccine. I have no way of knowing if my parents were ever apprised of the risks v. benefits, or just what. Or if they were told that I got polio FROM the VACCINE. It is clear that is what happened. And they told me as a child that "we caught it just in time" and the case of polio I got was "mild" because of their timeliness. But when I brought up this new awareness to them in the early 90s, they were in complete and total denial. Get it from the vaccine? No way, that's not what they told us! They had even forgotten that I was sick for months, on antibiotics nearly every month for a solid year before the vaccine.
I used to have my medical records from early early on, because we "hand-carried" them out of military life into retirement. As a single mom with baby on hip, I took them with me to Australia where I had planned to use them to assist with the anit-vax efforts down there, but that didn't work out at all. Sheer oversight on my part, I left them on a shelf in the home where I was staying, and when I left, it was not on good terms. So not good that the homeowner never replied to my requests for these valuable documents. That loss is keen. Still today. Losing them is probably the deepest wound I got from the whole experience. (The rest of my trip was quite wonderful - Australia is a lovely and beautiful place and its people are awesome. Perhaps more on that in future entries?)
My point is this: without my medical records, I could now never prove anything to anyone about the vax injury. But also the aftermath. There were at least 90 pages of physical therapy notes (extensive testing, these days not documented in as much detail), surgical notes for three surgeries, and similar. It would be important to me, in further medical care, in writing about my illness, to have those records. It would be important to others, I feel. Yes, the loss of those records is keen.
However, I do have the body still. The records only describe what was done to it, and I have the original body. The paralysis I suffered from polio at age 6 went up my left leg entirely stopping at my hip. I could not walk for a good three or four months. I did not lose function, at the time, in my right leg. The growth in that leg was stunted, but more importantly, the protocol after polio was to "take it easy." That was the exact wrong advice. After all the PT, wherein I learned to walk again, further exercise should have been allowed to build muscles and functionality. I grew but the left leg didn't catch up. There was an unequal leg difference and my slight limp became more pronounced as I grew taller. Scoliosis developed and I was put in a Milwaukee brace - from neck to hips. Special shoes were entertained for a few months but they helped nothing and caused pain, so I abandoned them.
You can imagine the social implications of this. Yeah, playground kids LOVE someone who limps. Oh, and the fun of 7th and 8th grade. Yeah. Good times.
Anyway, I had a permanent PE excuse. Great, except I was a very athletic-minded person. I wanted to be running, doing, riding bikes and horses, playing kickball, etc. I did as much as I could without incurring the wrath of my mom, but she never took the hint. I could stay out all day, come home completely dirty, sweaty and happy, and then get up the next day and do it all over again. But still they kept me away from sports and organized activity. After school, once we'd moved to the country, I was out every day with my dog, exploring the woods, climbing trees, trying to catch the neighbor's horses.
Which is why it is so hard for me now to get off my lardass and get to the the gym, or ride my bike, or whatever. But I'm going to do that now, as an experiment, so I can write about it here. It is so difficult to overcome the mental obstacles every.single.time I want to be active. Plus, there's the physical ones - constant physical limitations due to weight gain and now the onset of post-polio syndrome, with constant moderate back pain.
So when it's time to exercise, I can find a million reasons not to, most of which relate to the avoidance of pain, but a sizeable and significant handful of reasons are mental. First of all, it's just not fun for me to deal with all this. The fun is greatly lessened by the time I get into it. Secondly, it is not fun to be having fun and then suddenly lose balance or have a knee buckle and take a tumble, wrenching something in my back. That sucks, in fact. Thirdly, it's just rotten horrible lousy awful to be cranking along on weights or the elliptical, and have some idiot make an idiot comment. My anger at the whole thing is bubbling there just under the surface, and I want to throttle the unsuspecting idiot and remove them from the gene pool. Or hide.
See? Exercise is a good deterrent for depression and stress. Ha!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Body Issues, post work-out.
No comments:
Post a Comment