August 10, 2018, 2:30 p.m.
It was nice to see Francis again. We talked the entire time! Sometimes I think he is more of a psychotherapist than a physical therapist! But he is both.
(Because I’m writing this in retrospect, three days after the session, I may not remember all or many of the details. But I will remember what was—and is—important to me.)
He didn’t check my exercises on the treatment table at all, but he did give me a new exercise to do sitting in a chair (so I can do it sitting in my computer chair). Then he said, “Let’s talk about exercise.”
I wasn’t expecting this today, although he has previously gently mentioned that walking is one of the best things to do to improve neck pain, back pain, and almost all kinds of pain. So we talked quite a while about why I am not motivated to walk. There is NO physical reason why I *can’t* walk. I told him, “I have not walked since I left my last job.” (To me, this could mean when I lost my job at the Foundation in 2012 or when I lost my account with Glendale in 2016.)
When I worked in San Francisco at Degenkolb, I walked *every* workday for 30 minutes during my lunch break. I started working at the Foundation in Oakland two weeks after I left Degenkolb, so I tried very hard to continue my practice of a 30-minute walk during my lunch break, but it was harder. The streets in San Francisco where I walked were smooth and flat; the terrain around the Foundation was hilly and steep so it took more effort and I didn’t do it every day. Then I started carving out a walking route in the long halls of the wing where the Foundation was located. There were three floors, so I would walk the full length of a floor then go up or down the stairs to the next floor and continue for my 30-minute walk period. When the Foundation offices moved from Highland Hospital to uptown Oakland, I once again had smooth, flat city blocks for walking. On good days, I could walk from the I. Magnum building clear down to City Center where I had a wide choice of lunch options as well as a substantial walk. After Linda stopped working for J. Nelson and started volunteering at the Foundation, we ate at places closer to the office and we had Barley to walk, too, so the walking was slower and less distance.
After I lost that job, the next few months were frantic in finding a new place to live and coordinating a major family move. Even after we were settled in at Mission Bay, my walking was very hit and miss, even though we lived in a mobile home community with flat, smooth streets perfect for walking. Fast forward to 2015 when I started seriously eating low-carb, checking my blood sugar 3 to 6 times a day, and–yes–walking. Hit or miss. I focused on my Facebook group, Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics, which I had started in 2013 shortly after Linda was approved for disability (after a 3 1/2-year struggle). Life was good that year! We bought new bedroom furniture for our double-wide and we had a legal wedding in August. I was mentally prepared to get serious about Reversing Diabetes in 2014. I joined some other Facebook diabetes groups and I did a LOT of experimenting with low-carb recipes and testing them, as well as single food items, to find out what would not spike my blood sugar.
One of my Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics group members, although he ate a typical ADA-compliant lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, walked a minimum of 10,000 steps a day, or an average of 70,000 steps a week. I capitalized on that and challenged the other group members to increase (or start) their walking, whether they could do 10,000 steps a day or could barely manage to walk out to the mailbox and back! We called it The 30-day Richard Osborn Challenge and we started a tradition of doing this challenge every May.
It was on May 25 of 2016, while I was visiting my infant grandson, that I got the phone call that would change my life. I lost my most lucrative web client, representing a loss of 20% of our family income. Somehow I managed to continue walking every day for that rest of May while strategizing how I was going to survive. On May 30, I developed a severe toothache (upper right) requiring Tylenol with codeine.
We spent all of June in unloading the storage unit that we had had for four years. We changed cell phone providers to a cheaper service and a limited data plan. We gave up cable TV and bought an antenna and a Roku. Then we spent the rest of the summer recovering! We didn’t go on a vacation, not even a weekend camping trip.
But I never got back to the walking. Except for Alameda shopping day on Tuesdays. And very sporadic days once in a while. Of course, I didn’t say all this to Francis, but the memories ran through my head like a freight train! I told Francis that the only thing that could motivate me to walk would be if he mandated it as part of my physical therapy treatment. I said this with raised eyebrows, and Francis responded with a grin and said, “Okay, I am mandating that you walk 30 minutes a day for at least 3 days a week but try for five. Or six.” I got the point.
When I got out to the car after my appointment, Linda said that she and Emily walked for a short time, a short distance, because she acted like her feet were sore and it hurt to walk. Her feet were, indeed, very pink. So I put the cannabis salve on them when we got home. And Linda and I planned an outing for Saturday, to drive down to Pacifica Pier and go for a very long walk. I only had to stop at Target and get a battery for my Fitbit.
