For anyone, maintaining our health can be a matter of balancing several balls in the air. For those of us with paralysis, it is more like keeping the balls in the air and diapering a newborn while riding a unicycle. Not easy, but essential.
Even as I write this, I do not want you thinking our lives are JUST about taking care of our health 24 hours a day. We want to be healthy to enjoy all the good things in life: friends, family, travel, the arts, sports, careers. So we have to balance the time spent staying healthy with those other, more carefree activities. Everyone will have their own routines, tools, and support systems, and all of us are in different phases of recovery. But I have found that establishing a regular set of self-care practices that don't take up my entire day helps me immensely. I hope some of these may be helpful to you.
I keep a gratitude journal, each day recording 5 things for which I am grateful, and sharing them with a friend who does the same. Doing this first thing in the morning gives me a positive and grateful perspective on life. Taking a few moments to see the positives really makes a difference in my attitude throughout the entire day.
I also make it a daily practice to record what I eat and drink. This is a method used by those trying to lose weight (me included!) and allows me to understand and review what I am eating. Seeing my food intake laid out in black and white on paper or on my mobile devices helps me avoid bad eating habits, but also allows me to splurge from time to time. I know that when I grab that cookie or load up on pasta, I will cut back the next day to stay on track. Remember Julia Child's advice (often attributing it to Oscar Wilde): “All things in moderation – including moderation.”
Twice a week, I work out with a physical trainer. In a one-hour session, he guides me through a set of exercises that improve my strength and mobility.
Twice a year, I return for a ten-to-12-week bout of physical therapy twice a week at the Kennedy Krieger Institute's International Center for Spinal Cord Injury. The physical therapists there are miracle workers, and I am still making progress in my recovery even 12 years post-injury.
To help my mental health and keep my emotions on an even keel, I am consuming less news on tv, on social media and in print than I did even a year ago. With networks and online apps bombarding us with alarming “Breaking News!,” watching the news can push us into anger, confusion, sadness, and fear. And none of us needs that!
So you can see, there are things I do to stay mentally and physically healthy, and they vary from daily practices to semiannual treatments. We don't need to tackle everything everyday, and variety keeps us motivated throughout a year.
These techniques and activities help me stay healthy and keep my physical and mental balance. And The Reeve Foundation has fantastic resources on emotional and physical health while living with paralysis, starting here. They are only a touch away.
Here's to our health!