January is the time of year that everyone starts going to the gym. Every other local TV and radio ad is pushing discounted memberships and special promotions.
I have always hated gyms (and bars). And I don’t use the term hate lightly. I’ve always had this impression that gyms and bars are dirty places where people feel they have permission to gawk at one another.
This is, of course, sort of true and sort of distorted. And since I have very little experience with either of these places, it’s safe to assume I’m basing my opinion on stereotypes and conjecture.
During the years most people were getting in shape and going to bars, I was holed up with my nose in a book, or working late, or doing pretty much anything else I could think of to excuse myself from participating in something that might ignite my social anxiety.
And this is how I find myself, at age 43, only now trying to figure out how to not fall off an elliptical next to an equally shaky-legged guy attached to an oxygen tank, walking slower than conceivably possible on a treadmill.
They call it medical exercise.
It’s the next step after you graduate from physical therapy. The goal is to slowly (tediously, woefully) work my way back to the strength I had before my illness.
I knew I’d lost a lot of muscle and stamina, but until I started “working out” I didn’t realize just how far I had regressed.
I put “working out” in quotation marks, because I’m not really doing what healthy people my age do at the gym. I’m not counting reps, or even sweating, really.
The old people and I are just trying not to fall off these machines that look like they may turn on us at any moment and take over, first the gym, then the universe.
It’s been a humbling week in the aging department.
A dermatologist recommended I start wearing compression socks to keep my legs from turning purple. I can’t remember the name of the spots that are showing up on my calves, but it all has something to do with circulation.
So it’s just me and the old people in our compression socks, struggling to hang on to the man-eating machines at the rehab center.
I don’t like gyms, but…
…I do like hiking and climbing trees with my kids. I like gardening and playing tag and frisbee and even going up and down the stairs to change out the laundry without getting winded.
I can’t do these things as well anymore.
So finally the need to reclaim my old self, to be fully present with my husband and kids, to not be wheelchair bound by the time I’m 60, has surpassed my fear of the unknown. I must be brave.
I knew I had to do something…
…after a particularly upsetting incident involving a pine tree. I’d been sick for a full two years, and although I was beginning to see some improvement on my new medication regimen, I was still tired.
And this kind of tired, if you’ve never felt it, is not the kind you feel after a long day’s work, or after running a 5K.
It is a metabolic tired. A bone tired. A mind-altering, life shattering fatigue that clouds your emotions, your judgement, your speech, your breath. The very pumping of blood through your veins drains your energy.
This was the haze I was slowly pulling out of in the fall of 2018 when I encountered the offending pine tree. I had walked with my two sons to the park, a victory in itself. When we got there, my younger son wanted to play hide-and-seek, a game we frequently played in parks prior to my illness.
I agreed, as long as I could hide and not seek, because wandering all over the park searching for my sons would be too much for me. As my older son hid his eyes and began counting backwards from 20, I climbed under the low hanging branches of a nearby pine tree with the intention of sitting on a low limb.
The lowest branch was less than two feet off the ground. I could not raise my leg high enough to get it up and over. I’m not sure why this small matter was so devastating to me. But it was crushing.
In an adrenaline-fueled fit I lifted one leg with my arms and after some effort thrust it over the branch, badly bruising my shin in the process.
My sons found me shortly after I had settled myself in my hiding spot. It turned out getting down was harder than getting up, since I’d completely exhausted myself. I sheepishly asked for my older son’s help, and somehow made it home.
I continued to heal over the winter months.
As soon as the snow cleared a bit, I brought my family back to that park with the intention of conquering the tree. Which I did. I didn’t just climb up onto the first branch. I climbed until the branches became too dense to continue.
My husband took a picture of me up there. It was a big day.
Still, I knew I had a lot of work left to do.
Which brings me back to the rehab gym. Aside from a few college athletes getting treated for injuries, I am by far the youngest person “working out.” One adorable, bent-over arthritic woman told me she was 84.
I go in there with my invisible disease, in my sporty leggings and running shoes, and try not to feel self-conscious that on my worst days I can barely last five minutes on the elliptical; that I have to sit down to steady myself after a vigorous round on the arm bike.
If all goes as planned, in a few months I will graduate from medical exercise. I’ll be released back into the wild, where my trainers hope I will find another gym, and use all that I’ve learned to remain healthy and strong without their guidance.
What the physical therapists don’t know is, autoimmune disease isn’t my only invisible struggle. It’s hard for me to describe the fear that grips me when I consider walking into a gym full of my peers to work out; the vulnerability I will feel, and the courage it will take for me to overcome it.
I know it sounds strange, but I wish I could stay in the old people gym forever.
Copyright © 2020 Sara Beth Wald