Читать книгу unDIAGNOSED - Randy Beal - Страница 7

I’m not quite sure where to start. I struggled with this for months when I first contemplated writing a book and it got me absolutely nowhere. So I’m going to start with now: a blog entry from early 2007.

What a feeling! It's been awhile, but today we went walking. I've done a lot of standing and other exercises to help with control and strength, but today I just knew it was time to go for it. To date the most I've walked without braces was 6 steps. Today I walked 14 steps, took a break, and did the exact same 2 more times, and finished with 9 steps, a grand total of 51. At one point while walking, I got a huge smile on my face and my mom thought I was going to take off running. The steps I took today felt so good. They really helped my psyche.

As you can tell, I was thrilled that I was able to take 51 steps, without braces. Even better, check out the following week’s entry:

If you can do it in your mind, you can do it in body. I set a goal of 30 continuous steps and today I did 31. That was on the way to a grand total of 202. Just 11 days ago I could only do 51 with good amounts of rest between each round of steps. The most I could do continuously was 14. Whew what a difference. Talk about being on a high. And I feel like I could do more too.

Two hundred and two steps in a single day! That was monumental. It made me want to set the bar even higher. So I set the next single-day step goal to 300 and was excited about the day when I would walk again, unassisted.

Funny that the task of telling my story was so daunting to me when I thought of everything I’ve been through from the beginning. But starting like I did with where I am right now gave me just the jump start I needed. I think the first step out of any seemingly hopeless situation has got to be taking an assessment of where you currently are. It’s an assessment that you have to repeat over and over at each stage of recovery. Knowing where you stand (or sit in my case) is critical to knowing where you will go next.

You’ve probably gathered by now that I’m confined to a wheelchair and am only now starting to take steps again. How I came to be in this state is a long and strange story.

Prior to 2000, I was your typical stupid teen-aged male: healthy, active, and enjoying life. I was a football lineman for our high school team and was pretty ingrained into football culture and the parties and popularity that go along with it. During off-season, the football team would do a lot of power lifting to stay in shape and I got into it enough to officially join the power-lifting team my junior and senior years. Our team took 2^nd place at a local power-lifting meet and 1^st place the next year. I never thought twice about how great it felt to run across the football field or to stretch my legs out after an aggressive lift. I took these things for granted, as most teenagers do.

Like most teenagers, I also started to think about ways to get out of Dodge. I think about travel a lot now, but back then it was relatively new to me. I had heard of exotic places beyond the five states that bordered my home state, but had never ventured outside that circle of safety. So in 1998, I jumped at the chance to go on a summer mission trip with my church youth group to Mexico for 10 days.

Our group of twenty teen-agers, plus two chaperones, flew first to St. Louis to catch a connecting flight to Mexico City. This was my first-ever flight, and I pretty much kept the air sickness bag glued to my face. Turbulence was not a part of my vocabulary back then. But I, at least, felt a sense of accomplishment just getting through that first leg of the flight.

In St. Louis, I was singled out from the group as the only one without proper documentation. (I had a copy of my birth certificate and not the real deal.) This meant I had to stay an extra night alone in St. Louis, get my parents to overnight the birth certificate, and fly alone to Mexico City the next day. Not the greatest first travel experience, but again I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment at being on my own, if only for a day.

I rejoined the group without further incident. In Mexico City, we split up and lodged with various hosts from a local church. I and two other compadres were matched with a young single guy who lived in a multi-level home. He gave us a tour of Mexico City by night and helped us order tacos from street vendors. They actually cooked the taco meat in a hollowed out tree trunk. I felt very suave and sophisticated.

To give you an idea of my physical state at the time, we actually did some pretty strenuous work on that trip. Part of our mission was to help build a rehab center. I remember busting my back digging a ditch in some steamy weather and fuming inside because I felt like I was doing the lion’s share of the physical labor. I threatened to knock some heads with a shovel, but our gracious chaperone talked me out of it.

It wasn’t all hard labor, though. We got to visit some of the pyramid ruins outside Mexico City. We had made a pact beforehand that the entire group would climb the pyramid once we got there. I’m not a fan of heights; in fact, I’m a sworn enemy of all lofty places. (I once scored sweet front row seats to an Olympic event because my friends cited my “vertigo” issues to the ushers.) As you can imagine, I tried to worm my way out of climbing that pyramid, but the peer pressure was intense. The group egged me on and I wanted to prove to them and to myself that I could do it.

And I did. I was quite excited--still scared, but wanting to yell, “In your face!” to everyone who had pushed me to do it. We spent a bit of time at the top, and I took the opportunity to open up my pocket Bible, roulette fashion, and see what it had to say. It was a liberally paraphrased version, and the passage said something to the effect of, “Stop being such a wuss!” I must admit this took a bit of the wind out of my sails.

I look back fondly on times like this when I was healthy enough to dig ditches and climb mountains. Some memories are more difficult than others, but in general, instead of pining for the good ol’ days, I look forward to even greater adventures in the future. I’m trying to take that “wuss” verse to heart.

The Mexico trip whetted my appetite for more travel. When another mission trip opportunity came up in November of 2000, I was SO there. This time it was to Africa and things were about to change.