How Fitness Saved My Life – A Thanksgiving Narrative
One week after moving to New Jersey from Canada, I suffered a ruptured ectopic pregnancy (unbeknownst to me at the time) while out running. I’ll gloss over the ensuing hours of pain and fear as I somehow made it back home completely flummoxed at what the problem could be and tried to wait for it to pass. When I could no longer sit up without fainting the ambulance arrived and thus began a terrifying week of waiting, tests, waiting, emergency surgery and more waiting.
We’ll leave out the side story of NO health care insurance because my husband hadn’t started his job yet and Canada dropped us like a hot potato when they realized we were planning to stay in the U.S. The importance of that point was the stress over the cost of transfusions, consults, meds, and hospital stay were affecting my recovery progress.
With the reluctant blessing of my doctor I left the hospital in a wheel chair too weak to walk and a hgb of 9.6. (I had hemorrhaged over half my entire blood supply). I had never in my entire life been in such bad condition. For me, just weeks before, I had been in the best shape of my life, now I was too weak and winded to do much of anything but sit in a chair and watch my then 6 year old play or watch tv all day (as now my husband was working and it was summer break). Naturally I fell into a slight depression as all my plans of getting to know our new home, meet people and help Sophie meet friends were scrapped.
One day a few weeks into my tortuously slow recovery, a friend, who is also a personal trainer, helped me to view my situation in an entirely different light. He reminded me that we are all in a constant state of “training” regardless of our age, ability, responsibilities, health or sickness. We can all strive to improve upon what and who we are through fitness and health, we just have to adapt our goals. My goals, he reminded me, were just different now than they had been a month before. No- I couldn’t even walk a mile now but I could aim to walk a block and build upon that. I needed to let go of what was and focus on what is and move forward from there.
This conversation was the equivalent of a chiropractic adjustment for me – but in my mind, it made perfect sense! I had worked with people of ALL ages and abilities. I knew exactly what I needed but couldn’t see it because of the emotional and mental blocks I put up. I would never give up on a client, yet I had given up on myself.
Taking back the control over my health that was so abruptly snatched away from me not only re-empowered me but gave me direction and a sense of purpose, a path to follow towards a new destination. With renewed vigor (as much as I could muster) I set forth on this new journey, chipping away slowly at the milestones (literally) rebuilding my strength, fitness and health.
Three months later I was teaching fitness classes at a local gym with a brand new appreciation of my abilities and a strong desire to help others unwrap their potentials too. So, I am forever grateful for fitness -it saved my life literally, making me strong enough to survive, to keep fighting and to pull myself up though depression and injury towards strength and health once again. Yes I am passionate about what I do and feel my MO is to promote fitness and health. Had I not been in the physical condition I was in at the time of this incident chances are high that I would not have survived it. I would not have been able to leave the hospital care as early as I did (hence huge financial strains on our family). I would not have recovered as quickly or as completely. Mostly I would not have had the mental fortitude to keep going when the physical struggle of just taking a breath was so excruciatingly painful.
A commitment to fitness means a commitment to yourself to improve what and who you are, to be better than the day before, to pick yourself up and try again, to strive, to dig deeper, to discover deep within your being the drive, potential, the pure awesomeness that exists in all of us. I do believe we all have it tucked safe inside waiting to be revealed. I also believe that potential is dynamic, constantly growing and changing so we have endless possibilities to uncover. We just need to get started.
