This is the final post of The Turtle Walks. It’s been 7 years since I’ve been back to physical therapy and 8 years since I’ve written on this blog. I’ll give a general summary of what happened in my life, an update on my most recent physical therapy, and an outlook to the future. The last time I wrote on this blog, I had graduated from grad school, my mom had just passed, and I had just started my journey into working in biotech.
Career:
My career has had many ups and downs.
In my last entry I had just started working on the overnight shift at a 24 hour medical testing company. It was my first job out of college and was the worst job I’ve ever had. I was working the night shift which made having a social life almost impossible. The work itself was extremely tedious. I put new labels on tubes sent from doctor’s offices and sent them down the line to be tested. After a year or two, I might have gotten a job testing those same vials but it wasn’t clear if that would happen in one year or three. I started job searching almost as soon as I started working and found a new job after about 6 months.
The next few years I spent working at CROs (Contract Research Organizations). These are labs hired by various Big Pharma companies for drugs in various stages of clinical trials. I learned a lot in those first few years: how pharmaceuticals are developed, the regulations around drug development, and the many MANY years of work that go into every medication you will ever take. I made a bunch of friends and majorly beefed up the skills I had learned in school and working in a research lab. I learned a lot about cell culture, ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assays), ligand binding assays, and many other scientific sounding things that won’t make sense to a bunch of people.
I outgrew my imposter syndrome and started to realize I am becoming an expert in my field. In the world of CROs, scientists are treated as replaceable parts and you end up having to change companies to advance. Those years were a time of incredible growth but I knew I would have to find something more long-term.
Two years ago I got a job offer from a Gene-Therapy company. They work on diseases that have genetic factors/causes with no treatments available or the treatments available are hard on patients. My background working on drugs in clinical trials was highly attractive to them. They were just starting to put together a program to test clinical patient samples in-house, meant to replace a lot of the work done by CROs. This would lean heavily on my existing skill set while challenging me to learn more about FDA approval, documentation, and teaching skills to other members of our team. I love the work I’m doing and I can see myself working here for many years to come.
Personal Life:
For many years my love life was kind of a mess. I would go on a date and the person would pretend to be someone they thought I would like or they would balk at my disability. Parts of it were disheartening but I grew a thicker skin and leaned on good friends. I stopped trying to please other people and found a calm place where I loved myself.
In 2016, I went on a date with a man who was completely himself and it threw me for a loop. We connected almost immediately and I found myself falling without even meaning to. He was a little older than me, recently divorced, newly out, with grown children and grandkids. He didn’t sugar coat his journey and approached me with an open mind. He listened intently to my story and told me his and we discovered things about each other that the other didn’t know about ourselves. Being overly cautious, I warned him I would forget to text and I never answered phone calls. Cut to a few months later, we were boyfriends and called each other every day. His name is Anthony.
I met all the kids and grandkids. While protective of their dad, they got to know me pretty fast and we were soon hanging out most weekends. We ended up cooking, doing art projects, and watching movies together. My relationship with each person was different but all of them grew naturally. In 2018 I moved in and we became the beginnings of a new family unit. We traveled together, worked on the house together, celebrated birthdays and graduations. It felt like we had been together a lifetime and it became harder to remember the times without each other.
In February 2019, in the National Botanical gardens I proposed to Anthony. He said yes! We were married that May. I was so proud to stand up in front of all our family and friends and declare our love for each other. Many of my aunts and uncles, who had seen me grow up and then saw me relearn how to walk, were in tears as I walked down the aisle. Our kids were so happy for us and were shouting their love from the rooftops. I couldn’t have asked for a better family!
In March of 2020, the whole world shut down from the Coronavirus. It was a weird time to say the VERY least. My extrovert husband was forced to work from home and slowly grew more and more stir crazy. The lab I worked at remained open and I went into work every day but it was forever different. Every manager and executive only contacted us through email and I only ever saw people in the lab. I did the stuff everyone did: puzzles, gardening, endless Netflix. I like my solitude but it got to me too.
Our one saving grace, our new dog Reggie! He’s a mutt with a heart of gold and the build of a bodybuilder. We got him the week before the shutdown and we had to scramble to train ourselves with mixed results. We got a local trainer who helped us cement the basic commands and routines. His “teenage” months stretched our patience but walking him every day got us to meet our neighbors. He’s grown into a sensitive silly dog who is there for everyone. He’s always been sweet but he’s turned into an amazing member of the family and now we can’t imagine our life without him.
Life continued on for the next few years. The waves of Coronavirus ebbed and flowed and we got new rhythms to our lives.
Physical Therapy:
Due to some gentle nudging from my husband, in 2023 I finally scheduled my return to rehab at Kennedy Krieger Institute. I knew it would help me but I avoided even talking about therapy for years.
I'm the problem, it's me.
My last week-long boot camp was in 2016 and it was an emotionally loaded subject. I’ve gotten less and less return of muscle function as the years progressed. People to this day will still ask me if I’ve gotten strength back in my left left leg, which is almost completely atrophied, and I don’t have anything to say. Add on top of that my painful memories of the early days of rehab, and the shade of my late mother who attended all of my rehab for years. I didn’t want to go back but I knew it would help me refocus and give me some key exercises.
My new therapist Miranda was a ray of sunshine. She’s been working at KKI for the last few years and knew just about everyone I’ve ever worked with. She saw where I was and immediately saw areas we could improve: focusing on a better walking pattern, strengthening my core, and working out the few muscles I can move in my left leg. Some areas, like the distance I could walk and my area of strength and sensation, hadn’t changed at all. There were a lot of bad habits with my gait I’d developed over the years which got called out.
A lot of the exercises we worked on were variations of single leg stance. I’d put the opposite leg on a step and balance, switching legs every few minutes. When I started getting the hang of this again, she started throwing things at me or changing the step to an exercise ball. She worked on my form when walking, which has gotten extremely sloppy over the years. In my early years I had a running list of things I was supposed to focus on when walking: shoulders back, quads engaged as I step through, glutes contracted, keeping my frame square, core tight, arms swinging… The list goes on. I’ve tried to revisit this list over the years but having someone yell out everything on this list for a week cemented a lot of these more.
A couple of times throughout the week I walked in a weight supporting harness, the ZeroG Gait and Balance System. The harness is attached to a track on the ceiling. The machine lets out rope as you move, stopping and catching you if you either drop too low or the rope is pulled too fast. I worked on obstacle courses and attempted running and jumping, which worked when it was supporting a lot of my weight. It was a fun device and it gave me the freedom to try things that wouldn’t have been possible.
Doing aquatherapy on the underwater treadmill brought back a lot of memories. Over the years I’ve used the treadmill a lot. The water level supports my weight and cameras in the side of the pool allow me to pinpoint things in my walking pattern that others can see but I generally can’t. We did balancing exercises similar to those we worked on land: single leg stance, step ups, core and leg strengthening exercises, and lots of walking. The water is a great support but the resistance of the water makes for an extremely tiring workout.
I tried a new AFO with a supporting strut on the back, the Spry Step, which I’ll be investigating moving forward. My current model of AFO, the Blue Rocker, has a support plate in the front of my leg to prevent my knee from buckling. The new brace instead has a support strut on the back of the leg, which would prevent hyperextension (knee pushing too far backwards as I walk). I’ve fallen far less over the years and I need to protect my knees so this may be the way to go. I tried the Spry Step in therapy and while it would need some small adaptations (it gave me a blister and it’d need some sort of protective foam/cover) I like the way I felt walking in it. I’m going to talk to an orthotist soon to see what they recommend.
During the middle of the week, my husband attended one of my sessions. He’s been my biggest support these last few years and I’m glad I was able to show him this. I’ve talked about Kennedy Krieger for years and he was impressed by their facility. Understanding both my physical needs and my emotional struggles with therapy, involving him in this part of my life is so important. We worked on balance and strengthening exercises. We also walked around the KKI campus and he got to hear my Miranda yell out the things I’m supposed to be focusing on when stepping and walking. Impressed by everything he saw, he’ll help keep me accountable and remind me of this post the next time I try to procrastinate on health stuff.
I’ve done Physical Therapy for thirteen years so it should be no surprise I saw people I knew. My very first therapist at KKI, Meredith, was there! I got to give her a giant hug and give the best compliment: she’s still the voice in my head when I’m focused on my walking. We caught up, we’d both gotten married and moved on in our careers, and she had a kid now. She spoke fondly of my mom, who will always be my biggest cheerleader. It was amazing to see her and remind myself of both where I had started and how much has changed.
All too soon, the week was over and I returned home. I feel stronger already and much more conscious of my body. I want to keep this energy going and move forward with this new attitude. I’ll definitely be returning next year for a tune-up.
The Blog Comes to an End:
Thank you to everyone who read this blog over the last 13 years. You’ve helped me more than you will ever know.
My life has changed a lot since I started this blog back in 2010. My very first post was a defense tactic, so I didn’t have to give progress updates to each person in my family individually. It turned into a way to process my newly injured body, communicate my journey to family and friends, and as a way to fill time in between painful physical therapy. It put words to the bizarre feelings that kept creeping up in every situation, big and small. I didn’t think anyone would care, or if they did that only a handful of family would read it. Instead, it’s been read by thousands of readers over the past 13 years. Writing helped me form a crucial part of my story, and served as a reminder that I had things to say.
As the years went by and muscle groups in my legs returned, The Turtle Walks became a wall of honor: pride for myself and my support network on how far I’d come. By the time I went off to grad school, it became a defining part of me and my personality. It wasn’t just an online journal, it was a roadmap for everyone else with similar injuries! I sometimes forgot that my amazing recovery was due as much to luck and a spectacular support network as it was my own hard work.
The farther I got away from my accident, the less relevant my blog and my journey felt. It was like it happened to me in another lifetime or to someone else. I was employed, I walked with a limp but had convinced myself I wasn’t otherwise noticeable. The memories started to blur and fade. I appreciated everyone who had supported me but it was no longer needed. Or so I thought.
My recent rehab has made me look back at how I got here. In preparation for this post I re-read all of my old posts. It’s heartbreaking to see the pain and hilarious to see some of the things I thought were important. It’s the reminder of where I’ve come from and how much things have changed. I now look at The Turtle Walks as a time capsule of the boy I was. He had a long way to go but he was already learning lessons that he wouldn’t put together until years later. He was convinced he was too broken to love but didn’t stop anyway. I’ve not only learned acceptance but to love myself. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got it all (or anything) figured out but I’m happy with where I am and who I’ve become.
It's possible that I'll write more entries on here but I wanted to give this blog a proper goodbye. Opening up has made me more confident and put words to things I didn't know I needed to express. It's lead me to discussions with other disabled people who have called me out on my own ablism and biases. It let me share a side of myself that most of the world would never see. I'll always be grateful that I had that in my life and got to tell this part of my story. I don't see myself as a "blogger" anymore but I want to express how much it has brought to my life.
This is the end of a chapter of my life but the beginning of another. I don't know where it's going to take me but I'm excited to find out.
