I know it’s been a while since I’ve shared an update about my own health and recovery journey. For a long time, I was writing about my progress every couple of weeks, but I made a conscious decision to step back from that and keep the focus where I wanted it to be—on MJKO, our kids, and the work we continue to do in the community.

But so many of you have continued to check in and ask how I’m doing, and I thought it was time to share a little more. This is a longer and more personal reflection, but it gives you a pretty good picture of where I am today and where I’m heading.

“I wish I could do that.”

That’s what the man in the wheelchair said at Bridgepoint Hospital as I walked on the treadmill in a walking sling this past Wednesday.

 

My heart broke

It wasn’t that long ago that I was the person who couldn’t stand up, wishing desperately that I could walk.

And now I was walking. Nine minutes and thirty seconds.

Wednesday was the longest I had ever walked on the treadmill.

The man was sitting behind me in a blue hospital gown with his physiotherapist. His feet were being manually manipulated while he watched me walk.

And suddenly, I felt guilty. For so long, all I wanted was to get better. Now my hormones are finally becoming more stable. I’m on a very high dose of the birth control pill. My life is slowly coming back into focus.

I haven’t missed a rehab session. Well, I should correct myself. I’ve missed one rehab session in six months because I had strep throat. I have shown up over and over and over again.

But for so long, I was the one sitting in the chair, wishing for just a tiny ounce of hope.

Now I was the person someone else was watching.

“I wish I could do that.”

I have no idea what the man in the blue hospital gown is facing. I don’t know his diagnosis. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know what his prognosis is.

But something about sitting in that wheelchair while watching me walk was hard for him. And hearing him say those words was really hard for me. I want to celebrate the fact that I’m progressing.

I’m finally on my feet.

I’m standing.

I’m walking.

But in that moment, as my legs moved underneath me almost without me thinking about them, his voice echoed in my heart. For a moment, the world stopped moving. And I just hurt for him.

Going through something traumatic—especially learning to walk again—is something I think only people who have gone through it can truly understand.

You are fighting so hard just to regain your upright mobility.

To stand.

To take a step.

To move without pain.

And when you see other people in this strange community none of us asked to join—people desperately trying to get back on their feet—and they see you doing something they still can’t do, it’s a very difficult place to be.

Because I remember being them. I remember wanting to walk farther. I remember wanting to move without pain. I remember watching other people do ordinary things and wishing I could do them too.

And now, despite the incredibly long road I still have ahead of me, I’m the person someone looked at and said, “I wish that was me.”
I need to recognize what that means.

I need to recognize how grateful I am to be making progress I once feared I might never make.

My physiotherapist sensed my body tightening.

“Are you okay?”

He was behind me, helping position my body, encouraging me to stand tall and take longer strides. I was holding onto the walking rack, feeling my legs move forward beneath me. And I snapped out of the guilt and came back into the present moment.

I know not everyone is going to make a full recovery. That is an incredibly difficult pill to swallow. I am grateful for a medical team that has not given up on me. These days, every little thing seems to be another milestone. And for the first time in forever, I’m starting to believe:

I’m going to walk again.

 

The day before my rehab session had been difficult for an entirely different reason. I applied for Wheel-Trans. For those who don’t live in Toronto, Wheel-Trans is a TTC service that provides accessible transportation, including door-to-door service for eligible passengers. Never in my life did I imagine I would be applying for something like this.

I try not to see myself as someone with a disability.

I don’t want that label.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a disability. But for me, psychologically, I need to see myself as a person learning to walk again. So filling out page after page asking me to identify my disabilities was difficult.

Even harder was reading what my doctors wrote about my prognosis. But I also know what I am capable of. And I believe I’m going to recover.

If Wheel-Trans allows me to get to my medical appointments while Ibrahim is working, do my rehabilitation, and get myself home again, then of course it is the right thing for me to do. But for someone who has always seen herself as strong and competent, accepting that I need this help has been hard on my self-esteem.

Then I have to stop myself.

Less than six months ago, I was in the hospital unable to stand. The idea of doing anything independently seemed impossible. Now?

I stand in the shower.

I take out the garbage every day.

I do my own laundry.

I can even do some basic housecleaning.

I’m not walking independently yet.

I’m not doing activities outside my home independently yet.

But the very fact that I’m applying for Wheel-Trans shows the direction I'm heading. And that's the strange thing. Applying for Wheel-Trans somehow feels like both a success and a failure. The success is that I am finally at a point where I can even imagine getting myself to the hospital, doing my rehab, and getting myself home.

The failure—or what feels like failure—is accepting that I thought I would have bounced back by now. Somewhere in my mind, I apparently believed I was a superhero. I thought once my hormones were regulated, I would simply get up.

Start walking

Start running.

Drive my car.

Everything would be A-OK.

That isn't reality.

You don't spend two and a half years in bed and simply bounce back. My mental health has been up and down lately because the challenges I’m facing now are different. Before, I was so sick that my only goal was to survive the hour. Then the day. Now that I’m getting better, I have enough clarity to see how much I missed.

How much help I still need. And how much all of this has taken from Ibrahim too.

Last night, Habibi was awake for most of the night.

He has retained teeth that are causing him pain, and he’s scheduled for surgery next week.

There isn’t much I can do for him until then.

And it breaks my heart.

I hold him.

I kiss him.

I comfort him.

And suddenly I understand something about Ibrahim that I don't think I fully understood before.

There was a time when he watched me lying on the floor in complete agony for a month.

And there was nothing he could do to make it stop.

I don't know how he did that.

Ibrahim is so positive. He rarely talks about how difficult all of this has been for him or how much he has had to carry.

But he has told me how incredibly difficult it was to watch someone he loves be in so much pain and be unable to fix it.

I don't think I truly understood what that meant.

Now, watching my little puppy hurt, I understand it differently. It is incredibly painful to watch someone you love suffer when there is nothing you can do.

Sometimes all you can do is love them.

Support them.

Hold them.

And try to keep their spirits up.

I don’t want this to sound like a sad update.

Things are going incredibly well.

I am so grateful to be where I am right now and to finally be moving in the right direction.

To all the people who have reached out—even people I haven't heard from in years—who are rooting for me and reminding me how loved I am: Thank you.

And to the man in the wheelchair at Bridgepoint:

I hope that one day soon, you are the person on the treadmill. 

I hope you're standing. 

I hope you're walking. 

And I hope one day you look back at that chair and realize just how far you've come. 

And to everyone still sitting in the chair, desperately trying to stand:

Don’t give up.

Keep trying.

Keep showing up.

And to my MJKO family, thank you for continuing to root for me. I may not have shared as much about my recovery lately, but I am still here, still doing the work, and finally starting to see what all those months of showing up have been leading toward. I still have a long road ahead of me, but for the first time in a very long time, I can see myself walking down it.

OUR MISSION

MJKO is a youth charity with our center of operations in South Parkdale, Toronto.  We use leadership training to promote positive, healthy lifestyle choices for children and youth. With certified coaches, MJKO builds Community Champions by focusing on the needs of the whole person through two streams: non-contact (recreational), and contact boxing (competitive) which includes physical training (skipping, shadow boxing, defensive moves) and mental skills training (visualization and meditation). Our programs allow students to develop an appreciation for physical fitness, inclusive communities, mindfulness, healthy eating, and volunteerism.

  To learn more about volunteer opportunities with Mentoring Juniors Kids Organization (MJKO) or to donate please visit http://www.mjko.ca