My Health Back-up Plan In the far recesses of my mind, I’ve always been aware that I needed a health back-up plan, but I never developed one. I was too busy being athletic to slow down and think about what I would do if I had to restructure my lifestyle due to a change in my health.
I’ve always been an avid reader and writing has long been my creative outlet, but my emphasis was on playing golf and going to the gym. Most of the gym work was focused on making me more limber and stronger for golf. I played golf three to four times a week and practiced at the range for hours. I entered all the local tournaments and usually did well. Golf served my needs for physical activity and mental wellbeing. Most of my social life revolved around it. far as I was used to making it go, effortlessly. Well, this must be the proverbial golf slump, I thought. Happens to everybody. All I need is a few lessons to get back on track. But they didn’t help, and then more strange things began happening. When I tried to cross my my leg high enough to get it across the other one. I began lifting it manually and placing it 28
over the other knee. Then, one day as I began my daily stretching routine on my mat in my living room, I found I could only raise each go into my cross-legged sitting position, my knees stayed up in the air and my hip joints felt painfully stuck. motor skills. Climbing stairs was hard. I couldn’t lift things to put them on shelves. Getting up from a chair, standing up from a squat position, all became impossible. I had become a weakling over the course of a month. I didn’t face the fact that these things were not getting better no matter how much I tried to work on them myself. I was fatigued and lost ten pounds, a huge amount for me, a thin person. I had to face it; something was really wrong, and it wasn’t just going to go away. I made an appointment for a physical with my general practitioner. He was alarmed and sent me to see a neurologist, a rheumatologist, a gastroenterologist, and a specialist in neuromuscular diseases. After months of tests and examinations the verdict was in – I have necrotising myopathy, a rare chronic muscle disease. My muscle enzymes are attacking my muscles and muscle cells are dying. I’m in treatment now with heavy steroids and physical therapy. So far I’m not getting stronger, but not weaker either. There are some other treatment plans including immunoglobulin transfusions, but no-one has said I will recover.
