What really helps me every day is the people around me, especially when they are in a good mood, work routine, exercising and walks which I have been doing as often as I can. Walking calms me down and while walking it seems like nothing changed in my life. I am fully aware of the fact I cannot do things as I used them to do, so everything is different, but I am trying not to concentrate on what I have lost. However, there are situation in which it can be clearly seen that I am different from the others. I have been thinking of this a lot from time to time and I think there must be an advantage of this. I see life from another perspective I would say. I appreciate every day I am here. I love when sun is shining and when days are warm. I really enjoy when I feel breeze on my face or when I can watch how nature has been changed now in spring. I never knew that green colour could have so many shades. Do you know that when it is raining really heavily it is the same sound like when steaks are grilled? It seems like one part of my life has been closed, but the other one opened.
I have decided to turn everything into something positive and look at everything in the way how it can be done and not how it cannot be done. It is a great challenge. It is hard. It is fun. And hopefully it will bring something positive to the others as well. It is the way how I fight with my illness.
One of the really positive things is that I have tried cycling and it worked. First I was a bit worried that I had made a bit hasty decision, but as I am stubborn, I did not want to give up. Therefore I decided just to try, without thinking of it completely. I even did not have an idea how to do it and how it could work. I thought it would be the same like when doing the indoor cycling in the gym. I can say that it was not like that J I wanted to be completely independent while doing this, so I did not want anybody to help me. For doing it, I had to use both my legs. The paralyzed one, with muscles which I used instead of those one which are paralyzed as well as the right one which is partially ok. This was a real test of all the time that I spent in the gym doing exercises and learning how to use all those muscles which I had never used before properly. The beginning of my cycling was unsure. After a few minutes, it became better. However, whole in whole, it was completely different from cycling which I used to do in the past. It could bring happiness into my heart and I was proud of myself that I managed it. People around me were also very happy and it caused sensations among my friends and people who are like my private fan club J A lot of them are in a very similar stage like mine is and they admire the way of how I decided to fight with my illness and the fact I am paralyzed. I just do not want to sit and wait for what is going to happen without doing anything.
Once it was one of my friends who told me there are situations in our lives in which it seems we are losing everything we have, but it is always worth to fight – that is what he said: “Never give anything to anyone without fighting – you might lose, but you will be sure that you have done whatever you could to make it”