There will be no cap and gown.
No graduation ceremony or walk across the stage.
No presents, or speeches, or wild rounds of applause.
But I’ll tell you what – it sure feels like there should be!
Because last Friday afternoon, I was graduated from physical therapy.
That’s right. PT for my cootchie = no more!
Do you know what it was that earned me graduation approval?
You’re going to laugh. Are you ready?
I can stand on one leg without teetering and tottering all over the place.
Silly, right? But I’m telling you, even just 6 months ago I lacked the core to be able to pull this simplistic move off. It was pathetic. Whichever leg was in the air would shoot haphazardly across the standing leg. My hip would pop out, my arms would flail, and I would struggle to remain upright for even just a few seconds at a time.
Pathetic.
Until Friday, when I did it. Normally. With the prowess of a 6th grader (because, you know – most 6th graders are fully capable of this move I struggled so much with).
I rocked out with one leg in the air.
And the vaginatherapist told me she was done with me.
The truth is that physical therapy expanded beyond focusing solely on my lady bits quite a while ago. She was more concerned about my overall core dysfunction (caused by the combination of surgeries, scar tissue, endo pain, and a series of other injuries I had accumulated over the years without thinking much about them until the whole system came toppling down.) There are a lot of relatively simple exercises that I for one reason or another have not been able to accomplish in the previous months. Put me on a treadmill and I can run, but ask me to bend at the waist and all hell breaks loose.
It’s really been quite sad actually.
But through physical therapy and Pilates, I’ve actually started making some strides towards improvement. And with me now enrolled in a Pilates boot camp geared specifically towards people with rehab issues, the vaginatherapist made the call last week that I no longer needed her.
While there is still plenty of work left to be done, she thinks most of it can be accomplished through my continued commitment to Pilates.
Which means: one less appointment a week I have to worry about.
And I’m not sure I can truly express how exciting that is!
For quite some time now, my lunch breaks have been dedicated to doctor’s appointments. Dr. Naturopath. Acupuncture. Dr. Headshrink. The vaginatherapist. Regular checkups with my lady bits doctor. Blood work, and ultrasounds, and analysis galore. It all adds up. Into time, money, and commitment - trying to treat this disease naturally is a lot!
But now that I’ve been graduated from both the vaginatherapist and the regular therapist, I’m down to just 2 recurring appointments a week: Acupuncture, and my visits with the healer.
And starting in January, I am going to be cutting both of those back to bi-weekly appointments for 6 months. If all goes well with that, I’ll cut them both down to monthly appointments from that point forward.
Maintenance appointments. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Teeny and I were talking about this big plan of mine just last week. Reviewing my overall health and improvements over the last year, and the need for me to start turning the focus more on living my life for me and less on living it in a battle against this disease.
I’m doing well. Feeling well. And while there was certainly a point in time when I needed all the additional support I could get, I’m coming up on a year since my surgery with Dr. Cook and have been treating naturally with success ever since. It’s time to start pulling back and reclaim ownership of my life even more than I already have.
I was committed to my health. To maintaining all of these appointments and doing what I needed to do to be at my best. But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t exhausting to keep up with it all. That there weren’t times when I questioned whether or not I was flushing money down a toilet. That it wasn’t embarrassing every time I had to duck out of work for yet another appointment.
Still, here I am. Graduated entirely from 2 of my practitioners, and limiting my visits with 2 more.
Graduating to the next level.
One where endo has even less control over my life.
Where it warrants even less of my attention and time.
And where every once in a while, I get to a take a lunch break that actually consists of eating lunch. Rather than jetting off to just one more appointment after another.
I’m graduating.
And even if there is no cap and gown or ceremony to be heard of, I’m still feeling pretty proud.
Of both myself, and my cootchie.
ADSPACE
