I went to my 4th Personal Trainer class this past Monday, I went to my 2nd Physical Therapy class today. At issue is my walking and my balance. Heretofore, I couldn’t walk very far and my balance was left suspect after my fall on March 16th.

My personal trainer works with me non-stop for a half hour, and My physical therapist for 45 minutes. Melita, my physical therapist, had me do a routine and wanted 3 sets of 20. On the 3rd set, I asked her if she would take 19. She said, 20. I think she has a greater sense of what I can do and doesn’t accept anything less.

When I got home tonight, I puttered around the apartment for a spell and went outside to the park, where my favorite granddaughter sat on the swings. (She’ll remind me that she is my ONLY granddaughter.) I didn’t think of it and just walked from my porch to the swings. Dale and MaryPat observed me from the 3rd floor of the building and said, “Look at John; he’s walking.” (And without a cane, mind you as well.) Then, I had to acknowledge that this would have been near impossible last week. I was making progress. Suddenly, I experienced confidence that if and when I gain full control of my walking, living might be worth it after all.

If you suffer, and that is what I do, from as many maladies (I won’t name them all, trust me on this) as I do, you begin to decline in hope that you will ever return to any degree of normalcy. And in fact, the abnormal becomes the normal. So when I see a small degree of improvement from what I wasn’t able to do last week to what I can do now. Well, that’s just flatout encouraging.