Somehow, in the past weeks/months of ice and stupid weather, I have injured myself. I think it was when I slipped on the ice getting into my van and actually slid underneath the van itself, banging my leg on the open door. I can't say for sure though, but somewhere in my travels, I hurt my knee. I have had chronic knee pain since I was 18. It comes and goes, and it's mostly in the joints. This time it's different. It is in the tissue; my husband actually thinks it might be my ACL (whatever that is). I'm used to living with pain, but this is getting to be a bit much. I can't even kneel down on the floor to play with my kids! I decided to make an appointment with the doc to see what it might be, but the earliest I can get in that actually doesn't mean rearranging my whole day home schedule and forcing parents to take sick days from work is mid-April. Ugh.
But that's beside the point really. I don't need to complain and harp about my stupid knee and the constant pain. I'm not dying, and I can still walk. That's about it though! Running is a no go, which sucks because I really wanted to do an 8 K this spring. Not going to happen. I took my kids swimming last weekend, and that actually made the pain worse. I did a leg workout with lunges and squats, and what do you know? That hurt too. Didn't I say I wasn't going to complain? Ha! I'm only human.
What I really wanted to write about though was the fact that I don't want these kinds of things to lower my quality of life anymore. I have had knee pain for years and years, and it has made me less able than I'd like to be in my life. I also have had asthma since I can remember, and I have never really taken steps toward managing it properly. I have always had a rescue inhaler, but I have never stuck with the preventative meds. Right now I'm trying a new medication and crossing my fingers that I won't have a difficult time breathing for the entirety of allergy season, which is fast approaching. It would be nice not to wheeze my way through another spring, summer and fall! This disease has greatly affected how physical I am, and until a few years ago, it completely stopped me from doing any exercise at all. I used it as a crutch at times, yes, but when you can't breathe, everything else seems kind of trivial. I am hoping that I can now stop worrying all the time if I'm going to be able to breathe during my workouts. I don't want it to stop me anymore.
Thinking about this has me taking stock of how I've lived my life thus far, and how many things I have allowed to affect my quality of life. I am no longer going to do this! I won't let my asthma stop me from exercising, and I am not going to live the rest of my life with knee pain if I can help it. It's just not worth it. When you can't even kneel down on the floor and play Lego with your kids, you know something is not right. So I'm done with it all. I am going to decide what my quality of life is going to be, and then, I am going to take steps toward getting it! Why shouldn't I?
Part of my motivation for this is the fact that I am turning 30 in a few months. I have written on this topic before, extensively. I fear my thirties a great deal, because my mom died in her thirties. And she was pretty healthy. I don't want to give my mortality any more ground than it already has, and to be quite honest with you, I don't feel old enough to be 30. I'd also like to keep it that way, so no more junk is going to weigh me down. Not my body, and certainly not my mind. I choose not to perceive myself as fat anymore, because I'm not. I choose not to live with pain, and to take every measure possible to rid myself of it. I choose to manage my asthma better so that I don't have to worry if I'm going to have to go to the hospital to be on a ventilator if I forget my inhaler at home and visit someone with cats. No thanks! My thirties are going to be the healthiest decade of my life thus far.
I am so passionate about this that I'm actually tearing up right now. I absolutely refuse to live a less than amazing life anymore! I will not accept the limits that I have placed on myself in the past. I do not accept that I have to have any limits on what I can achieve at all! I'm so done with it.
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