Why Do It Anyways?

The title of my blog says it all for me: "Do It Anyways".

This is my current life motto. I have to think this way because of the disease that I have which has reduced my options down to either:

1) Laying around doing nothing, eating and continually expanding

or

2) Being in motion and exercising and just plain doing stuff even though it hurts.

Because it always hurts, whether I exercise or not, so I might as well exercise if I want to keep living. Which I do. I have to remind myself of that, sometimes more often than I'd like when I'm in a big pain cycle or flare.

This thing that I have is extremely rare, incurable (at the moment), hardly studied and managed only through surgery and pain medication. The name of it is Dercum's Disease in case you happen to be interested. When I have to describe it to people I usually say that it is like fibromyalgia with bonus lumps. The lumps are lipomas and angiolipomas which are conglomerations of fat that grow all through my body (so far head,hands & feet are spared). Lipomas on their own are quite common, most people (and dogs) have them and they don't hurt and rarely need to be operated on. Mine though are very numerous, over 200 at last count, some as small as a grain of rice, other golfball sized.

I have surgery to have several at a time removed when the site specific pain gets to be too much. Thanks to a great dermatological surgeon and a great acupuncture, I've now got the surgery recovery down to a fairly easy thing. It wasn't that way at first though.

I have found that almost any significant amount of activity means that I pay for it later on, especially the next day. Sometimes I'm immobilized by weakness, pain, and lethargy for more than a day. So it is a constant struggle for me to make the choice to do stuff, to go out and use my body as everyone else can, because I know I'll pay for it the next day. But I have a family and I want to have a life where I'm involved with them, participating in their lives and activities, so I can't just skip going places all the time, that isn't going to work for me or them.

My biggest activity goal for participating in this 12 week New U program is to walk my dog, Zelda everyday. We live on a very steep street, so this isn't just an amble around the block I'm talking about. I get out of breath and sweat and everything. Sometimes I can make it on the long circuit which is about 1.5 miles (that's my "block"), sometimes only the 1/3 mile to the mailbox, sometimes just to the faux stop sign. So my main goal is to do some version of this walking the dog thing, every day. I want and need to establish this habit. Zelda needs to lose weight too, so hopefully she'll have a positive, fruitful New U experience also...