Hello

In 2024, I had an abscess burst in my brain.  After a helicopter ride to Auckland Hospital and a full craniotomy, I lay semi-paralysed, unable to move my right leg.  For a few days, I tried and tried to get my toes to wiggle and, at last, they did.  The team shared "Yay's" as they saw me wiggle my toes!

But my body had been through so much that my digestive system stopped working, and then I had to have full abdominal surgery too.

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So one nightmare blended into a bigger nightmare.  After 7 weeks in the hospital, I came home.  However, the most important message I received from the brain surgery team is that I lived because I was strong and healthy.  The odds of my not making it were a lot higher than surviving.

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I thought about it a lot when I got home.  Why did all this happen to me?  All I have ever done in my life is to help people learn.  My career has been as an adult education specialist, teaching all sorts of subjects!  I questioned myself as to why I was strong and healthy, because I had never really tried that hard.   In 2007, I had nearly died after a medical misadventure in Auckland hospital, where I ended up with peritonitis, a partially collapsed lung and sepsis.  I survived but was weak for a long time. Why did these things happen to me?

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Then I recalled back in January 2014, I was diagnosed with a lower back problem.  As the pain I experienced was horrible on the days I stood and taught, I asked about surgery.  My issue was not a critical "surgery needed" category, or even a "surgery recommended" category.  It was that surgery really was not at all critical and most people did not go through that for my back issues.

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I decided I would get a personal trainer to come to my house 3 days a week (so I could not get out of it) and had to follow through.  I had joined lots of gyms in the past and I got lazy, and the gyms really did not care at all.  Natalie, from Functional Training, came to my home nearly every week in 2013.  She still chuckles about how I could not even get off the chair without a "push off" by my hands. 

 

I gradually improved, but one day I was attempting to do an exercise and did not pay attention.  I tried to lift my foot as requested, but did not realise my knees were in the wrong position.  I could not get a signal to my foot to "lift up".  Natalie analysed this and said my sacroiliac joint was pinching the nerve because of the issue in my back.  It was stunning and helped me to understand so much.  This is what caused all the pain all the time!

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As a result, I booked the surgery, and the surgeon was brilliant.  I had the issue in my back completely fixed. 

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After 6 weeks, I had to go to physio and Natalie came with me.  She wanted to understand what exercises I could and could not do during the recovery period.  A week or so later, I was moving north to the Tutukaka coast, so Natalie and I continued my sessions in 2015 and longer by Zoom.  I got stronger and stronger, and I kept things going intermittently.

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However, it was Natalie's help that got me strong and then my behaviours that allowed me to stay strong.  So I am alive today because I had help, support and encouragement to get strong, and it was done the way I needed.  

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Too many people do not identify the cause of a pain and just give up.  Instead, we must work out how to protect ourselves from getting worse, and explore what may help the issue that causes the pain.

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One body, one life.  Our job is to keep the body moving.