The Experiment – A 365 Day Search For Happiness

And so I went back on medication today for the depression and anxiety that were getting worse by the day. I am doing this with an incredible lot of support as well as the concern of one friend who is extremely anti-medication. His fears weigh heavy on my heart and are hard to take, but I must find my way to health and wholeness in the way that feels best and right to me. This is it. But there is more that I am dealing with.

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that I was committed to the ketogenic diet even though it wasn’t able to keep me off medication, that it has helped me in so many ways. And indeed it has, in fact one of the hugest benefits of keto has been that it reversed the prediabetic state I had been in for at least 3 years. This is a very good thing and my blood sugars have been normal since the beginning of the year and will stay so as long as I stay keto which I am. The problem is that before I started keto, in those prediabetic years, I developed significant neuropathy in my feet. They are not painful, but there is a lot of numbness. This is scary. You have to be really careful. The diet will help keep them from getting worse but the damage is already done, nerve damage is not reversible, and it is extensive in my case. My foot doctor said to me yesterday, “If I were to give you a number, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst, your feet are at an 8. Your feet are considered at risk.” I knew I had neuropathy, I never realized it was that bad.

I cannot walk for exercise because I can stumble and fall. I cannot get down on the floor to do yoga, say, because I cannot get back up on my feet, they don’t hurt but they feel odd. It makes me afraid. And there is nothing I can do about it but be strict with diet so my blood sugars stay normal. If I did not take care of myself I could be one of those people who one day lost her feet. As it is I have to be extremely careful when cutting my toenails, say, because I could cut myself and not feel it. My feet are at risk. That is not something that, at 64, I wanted to hear. Today I left a message at the clinic. I want to get the paperwork to get a Handicapped placard for my car. I wouldn’t always use it. I don’t need it, say, to go to the grocery store or places where I can park and walk a short distance into where I’m going. But in this town there are places where parking is so bad that without being able to park in a handicapped spot I would have to park blocks away and walk. I cannot do that. I will never be able to do that again.

In my life my feet have been a challenge. In the 90’s I had a tumor growing in the bottom of my foot and had to have surgery. As it was healing I fell and broke the same foot. It was a year before I could walk again and I never quite walked right after that. In 2004 I fell down a flight of stairs and broke both feet, badly. In the emergency room the doctor said to me, looking at my x-rays, “You didn’t break your feet, you shattered them.” It was again a year before I could walk unaided by a walker, and then a cane, but my feet were so damaged from that fall, my big toe on my left foot healed very badly, that I have never been able to do foot related things with ease since. Now in these last years came the neuropathy. I will stay on the ketogenic diet, I will get healthier than I’ve been in years, I will lose all the weight I need to lose even if it takes me 3 years to do it, but I can’t change what has happened to my feet.

Today I sat here looking at my life and thinking, “Okay, so I’m back on meds to help ease the pain of my troubled mind, I am on the diet that will heal my body in many ways, I am going to study and learn everything I possibly can to take care of my feet. What else is there to do? I am on a journey to wellness, to feel as good as I possibly can on every level. I have limitations, I always will. It feels daunting. I feel afraid. But I can either sit in fear or do the best I can with what I’ve got. I once took a course I am going to pull out and redo. It is called Ass-Kicking With Limitations by the amazing Esmé Weijun Wang. She has lived for years with chronic illness and yet has created amazing work in the world, working within her limitations. I am going to learn how to create a life within the confines of the limitations that I have as well, physical, mental, and emotional. It is possible. I believe that. I know that.

And so today, in an attempt to find a way to live my life with an easy heart, I am making a list of what I can and cannot do and I am going to expand on all the cans and let go of what cannot be. There is so much more that I can do than that I can’t. I am going to start kicking ass with the limitations that I have. I am going to do this thing. You can too.

I would love for you to write in the comments below and tell me how you are going to kick ass with any real or perceived limitations that you have. You can do this. Let’s do this together.