I DID IT!!!

I did it! I walked 3.1 miles yesterday in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk! All the way, never stopping, never resting, and I was hot footing it towards the finish line yesterday because my bad knee on my "good" leg was screaming lol. I DID IT!!

I was nervous all day, hoping I could handle it. If you count the three hours we walked around before the official walk I walked about 8 miles total yesterday. On my busted ankle. No pain in the ankle, then or now, but my knee on the other leg and the bottom of both feet hurt this morning. Nothing unusual though, I felt the exact same way when I started walking last Winter down the long dirt road next to my house. I got in the truck when we were done and once we got out of the town center where we walked I burst into tears. I was so proud of myself.


The walk yesterday almost did not happen since the company Jack works for totally dropped the ball and bailed on the whole thing. No one else from the company showed up. We went anyway because it was so important to me on so many levels. For one, I am a cervical cancer survivor myself, and so many of my family have died due to cancer, including breast cancer. It is a cause most dear to me. I also felt the need to go and represent, to show my husbands company ( we are friends with the boss so it was a personal let down that no one else showed ) what you were SUPPOSED to do. I was so upset that the company bailed, I felt like I had to go just to show them up and show them what it should have been like.

However, even though the cause was special to me in those ways, the most special reason was to prove to MYSELF that I could do it. When I got hurt, I got thrown into the worst situation I have ever been in. Considering my life thus far, that is saying something. The physical agony and not being able to do anything was bad enough, but the resulting mental anguish and deep emotional depression I was caught in almost did me in. I do not mean to sound lame or dramatic, but the honest truth is I considered many times how to kill myself just to make it stop. The pain, the helplessness, the frustration, the depression, the loneliness, the anger....it almost made me literally lose my mind. I was convinced I would never be able to walk again. After I began to heal, I still did not feel like myself ( and to be honest I STILL do not, but it's close ) and I was still miserable. Even after I came home and got rid of those infernal crutches and started walking with the boot ( and now without the boot inside the house, the air helped heal my incisions, you know, the ones that the internal sutures decided to crawl out of? *Shudders* ) I still felt like crap because I could still not resume life as I knew it before I got hurt. I could not stand at the stove or sink to cook or wash dishes for any length of time, and I STILL can't stand at the sink for more than 10 minutes. but I can cook with ease again ) I could not do laundry, or make my bed. I could feed us and I could walk Alex to the bus stop every day but that was about it.

I mean it is just a life changing injury, one that I never expected it to be. I have learned a lot on this journey about help and love and  being able to adapt, and how to do my best to hold the fragile pieces of my shattered mind together through all this. Bones are not the only thing that became fractured and splintered during this process. So for me, yesterday was my moment. My battle between who I was before I got hurt and who I became after I got hurt. The real me won. I beat myself. My shadow of despair now has a walking boot print on her forehead. I sat in Jack's truck, tears rolling down my face, saying " I did it" over and over again. Mr. Stoic Man himself grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, with tears in his own eyes and said " You did it baby, you won. I am so proud of you!"

I mean yeah,sure, it is only a 3.1 mile walk...but for me...it has been a journey of a thousand miles...

I did it.

Now I leave you with some pics from yesterday. They were taken with Perth's camera phone so we all look shorter and wider than we really are lol...

Here is a shot of Jack, Alex and I...

Here is one of Perth and I....

 


Alex's pretty painted face...

Pic of Jack helping me down a hill during the walk. Uneven terrain is still hard for me, as are hills, so of course part of the route has both AT THE SAME TIME lol...

Perth and Jack....

Perth and Alex walking....

I took a few more of the band and some belly dancers and stuff but the camera would not zoom enough so you really can not see much. These were the good ones. So yeah. Pictorial PROOF that I did it lol. We had a blast and look forward to next year!