Sun Salutation

My back and hips have been extremely stiff and painful for over a year now. It's the result of severe MS spasticity that locked up my muscles to the point where I was wheelchair-bound for much of 2013.  In February 2014, the chemo component of HSCT stopped the MS autoimmune attack on my nerves. The transplant of my own bone marrow stem cells gave me a new immune system to keep me alive.  The procedure worked, but it irritates me a bit when I read articles calling HSCT a miracle. The word "miracle" implies divine intervention and instant healing. That's not what HSCT is about. Though all my MS symptoms and most of the spasticity are now gone, a year of being crippled by MS took its toll on my body. If this is a miracle, it's the kind that happens slowly, like a tree growing toward the sky, or a baby learning to walk. It appears that I am indeed on the three-year recovery timeline that Dr. Burt tells patients to expect. It's certainly better than the path I was on.

Slowly, I'm walking better. But it's not easy. The balancing muscles in my core abdomen and lower back are still reactivating. The challenge is deactivating them smoothly as needed for fluidity of movement. I start every day going through the binder full of physical therapy exercises and stupid human tricks the therapist gave me to improve strength and balance. It's exhausting and takes about an hour.  

But strength is not enough; I also need to stretch out my back, hips and legs. For that, I do yoga.  For now, I independently go through three cycles of the most basic yoga movement series known as the sun salutation. It is not a beautiful thing to see me do yoga, nor is it pleasant to do. But the benefit is replacing cramping and pain with a sensation of warmth.  It's like hitting myself with a hammer because it feels so good when I stop. I will soon be joining a formal yoga class for regular practice with an instructor.

But now it's a sunny summer day and I'm going out for a walk. That's quite wonderful, even if it hurts a bit.