Terrible typo…

I was just re-reading my previous post about my checkup with the surgeon who operated on my knee. For some reason, I had put that I was recovering from ‘a significant car accident’. No idea where that came from, but it illustrates that I must be very careful in proof reading before I publish in future.

However, talking about significant car accidents, I did have one several years ago where I was in a small car turning right at a busy intersection and was hit side on, tipping my car upside down and spinning on it’s roof. All this happened in what felt like a split second. One moment, life was humming along and I was reasonably fit and able and had been tramping in the hills with my husband. After the accident that life changed and was affected forever. I was off work for months with cracked ribs, extensive bruising and a punctured right knee.

For several months I could not walk on uneven ground, couldn’t walk on soft sand and had to return to work slowly. From that point on, I began to lose fitness and put on weight. I have never really got back to that level of fitness again. This was a defining moment in my life that changed it forever. A moment’s inattention that was to affect both myself and my husband.

Fast forward to 2020 with my husband and I in the waiting room waiting to be assessed by a Neurologist. With my parents both having had Parkinson’s, I had a pretty good idea that I too had inherited the condition. I remember seeing someone who was quite advanced come out of a room with shuffling gait. I thought to myself ‘that might be my future!’

I was tested by a young registrar and then met with the Neurologist. He was able to give me a diagnosis on the spot and was firm in saying there was absolutely no doubt that I had Parkinson’s. No scans, no imaging of any sort, no mucking about, just a firm statement that I had been correct and that I was a person now who had a diagnosis of Parkinson’s.

This has been another defining moment in my life. However, perhaps because I am older with more life experience the way I lived my life after diagnosis has been very different from my life after my car accident. After my car accident, I was very much focussed on what I couldn’t do, whether that was short or long term. After my Parkinson’s diagnosis I became much more focussed on the positive aspects of my life. I have more appreciation of the good things in my life. I am less inclined to waste a moment of my life and more focussed on family.

Where I would sit at home and bemoan the fact that I couldn’t do much of anything after my car accident, with the diagnosis I focussed on identifying what gave my life meaning and how to preserve these things as much as possible.

My car accident feels like it took away a huge chunk of my life, my fitness and my ability to do a number of things and I could not see anything positive at the time. The split second of a car accident had far reaching effects. In comparison, my diagnosis has so far given me more than it has taken away.

Since my diagnosis, I am a more positive person and inclined to try to do as much as I can for myself and to find things that I enjoy both for myself and in spending time with family. It has given me a renewed passion for life. It has enhanced my ability to write poetry, which is a joy to me. It makes me appreciate all the good things in my life and the good people I have the privilege of knowing.

I hope to have many years to experience all life has to offer. Though at some points along the way things will change and some things need to be modified due to changing abilities, I remain determined to live a good life.

Two significant events in my life, my accident and my diagnosis, both of which could be viewed through a negative lens. I choose to look for the positives in life not the deficits and negativity that I could perhaps focus on.

Life, however, long or short needs to be savoured and appreciated for it’s gifts, not living a life of regret and sorrow and focussing on the losses.