The Battlefield

The memories of the night I became paralysed never fade. No matter how much I try to bury them to the deep recesses of my mind they always creep back into consciousness. The imagery is still so vivid, the colors, the sounds, the feelings; they never seem to fade one bit no matter how hard I try.

That night my life changed forever. I literally watched my body wilt and wither in front of my eyes while I struggled to grasp what was happening. As time passed and my legs continued to lose their ability, my naivety of the situation kept me ignorant to what occurred.

After I woke and the outcome of what had happened during the night was revealed, I realised there would be no easy answers… there is not a prescribed plan for dealing with Transverse Myelitis. In life we think there are cures for everything that will happen to us; that if something happens there is always a treatment until one day there isn’t and it’s completely unfathomable.

In the following weeks I would wake up and there would be a few moments of bliss until the smells and sounds of the rehabilitation center dawned on me and drew me into to my new reality. Each day would begin and so would the constant battle between my mind and my body. My mind would try to do something and my body would not respond. It was completely maddening and I just couldn’t comprehend. How hard could it be to move a limb, an ankle, a toe! I had been doing it my whole life up until then and now nothing.

I remember thinking about Kill Bill when Uma Thurman wakes up from her comatose state and stares at her toes. She wills her toe to move by saying, “wiggle your big toe” to it. After a few repetitions and some intense concentration it responds. Needless to say it wasn’t working out as quickly for me as it did for good old Uma.

I like to think of myself as someone with a high threshold for pain. Once I had a quad-bike accident in Greece and needed 30 stitches. I did the procedure without any anaesthetic, but this new pain I was experiencing was on a whole new level. This pain not only affected my physical body but my mind and my spirit too. It affected me to the core.

When you reach a place in your life when you begin to question every aspect of yourself, your past, your mistakes, your regrets, your future, your essence, you can spiral into a vortex of self-depreciation that can be hard to crawl out from. Over the 12 grueling months that followed, I was pushed to every limit I had and that process taught me many things. I learned that we are resilient beings. We adapt and survive and when you align your mindset with your actions, anything is possible.

The path has been difficult and my struggles still continue, but as my mentor once said to me ‘you have to love who you see in the mirror’. Everyday when I look in the mirror, I don’t love who I see, but everyday I get closer to accepting her and closer to liking her. Everyday I march onwards to the battlefield.