Ataxia

 I took a very bad fall on Valentines Day. Worst ever.  Three days in the hospital.  Surgery.  Bed pans.  Broken back.  Excruciating pain.  Two months of living in my bed.  Horrible. I was so depressed at some point I couldn’t look at or smell food.  One week of no eating.  Best diet EVER.  Twenty pounds gone.  I would have committed suicide but I didn’t have enough Ambien to do the job nor the courage to use another method. I screamed in pain all the way home from the hospital.  I could not sit up for 2 months. I screamed that life with ataxia was hard enough.  Now this? My message today:  shit happens.  You WILL get through it even when you believe, like I did, that you’ll never get better, you will. My husband (to whom I will be forever grateful for the bedpans etc.) kept telling me I was getting better.  I dismissed him.  I am sorry. Ataxia doesn’t protect you from disaster.  It prepares y...

Ataxians are famous for coming up with excuses for not exercising.  I can’t stand.  I can’t afford exercise equipment.  Blah, blah. Allow me to make the case for exercise. Helps with mood.  Ataxia sucks!  Exercise greatly  helps   with self - esteem and mood .   Better than   meds. Face it.   We’re all going to have to transfer some day. 🦽 Less weight and strength are vital. Time.  We struggle to fill the day in advanced stages of this disease.  When you can’t drive or work, the days can get long.  Exercise fills the void. So, expensive exercise equipment.  Free seated cardio and strength training videos available on YouTube. Equipment:  I am lucky enough to have hand weights.  Soup cans or water bottles or body weight works. I am lucky enough to have a therapy pool.  It is such an important part of my life that I will have a separate post about it.  I cannot stand on land, but I open every wo...