Tag: health

Water is important

youshouldgoanyway
Fountain in Wellington, NZ

I recently had a bout with kidney stones. After it was all said and done my doctor said they were calcium stones and that it’s likely I developed them because my bones were shedding calcium and I was not drinking enough water. This is a reality for anyone who starts using a wheelchair but particularly for someone with muscular dystrophy. The bones just don’t need to support as much muscle (or weight) as they used to, so they give up the calcium.

Drink water!

Over the last few years I was definitely not drinking enough water. I was drinking coffee and tea — not to tremendous extent — but it would have been better for me to drink water instead. I know for sure I was not drinking 8 cups a day.

Since my kidney stone procedure (a long other story) I have finally figured out some ways to get myself to drink more water.

1. Drink through a straw.
For whatever reason my brain subconsciously must think that lifting a glass to my mouth is torturous. It is difficult, but really not an excuse to avoid drinking water. However I noticed that whenever I get a soda or iced coffee, I can suck down the entire drink much faster than if I was sipping from a cup.

2. Get a hydration pack.
I remembered seeing those helmets at sporting events with the cans and the long tubes attached to it and wondered if there was something a more refined — and there was. Hydration packs come in a variety of sizes and have a long tube you can keep sucking water out of. The only pain is that you have to clean this out a bit more thoroughly than a cup, but it can go with you anywhere. If you use a wheelchair you sort of have to jerry rig it to your chair but it can be a good way to stay hydrated.

3. Get a water cooler and put it somewhere you pass all the time.
Many years ago I had one of these right next to my desk and it was so easy to just reach over and fill it up. Mine had a cold and hot water button and although the 5 gallon tank was too much for me to lift, for $20 a month it was a great solution. You can even buy your own tank and then have the water delivered from a local water delivery company.

4. Keep track of how much you’re drinking.
I mentally try to add up all my water intake for the day. It becomes disappointing when I don’t get up to 64 oz. I actually aim for 80 so when I don’t even reach 64 it makes me run to the sink for one last water binge. Before I kept track of this I really had no idea how little I was probably drinking. There are days even when I keep track that it might be 5pm and I’ve only had 24 oz. of liquid — not good. But my body doesn’t scream for water like it does for food, so it’s important to stay on top of it.

5. Mix it up.
You can get sick of plain water really quickly. I have several different types of powdered mixes like Crystal Light that let me switch it up. There are boxes of single-serving mixes that you can get so you can carry them with you too. I also will allow myself to drink juice and even throw in a soda every now and then. You don’t have to give it up altogether.

If you drink enough water you can definitely keep kidney stones at bay. There are also many side benefits to drinking lots of water — losing weight for example, among other things. So do your best to stay hydrated — especially if you have muscular dytrophy.

When should I give up on walking?

youshouldgoanyway

Walking is an advantage as a human because the world is set up for walkers. I walked until just past 30, when I decided that using a wheelchair would benefit me much more than what was left of my walking ability would give me. This is the quandary: At what point is it better to use a wheelchair than it is to keep walking?

I see people struggle to keep walking or set their hopes on walking again some time in the future. I must say that unless it’s a full-blown normal type of walking that includes being able to walk quickly, go up stairs, and not fall down often then I don’t really want to walk. When it was difficult, walking was a huge negative in my life.

First, doing anything involving walking became stressful. I didn’t want to get run into by a frenzied kid. I didn’t want to trip and fall in the middle of a parking lot. I didn’t want to have to explain to people that I wasn’t drunk when I got into my car to drive home.

Second, my walking was slow. I get extremely impatient when things are slow — slow walkers, slow drivers, slow lines. I was tired of taking an hour to go through a grocery store when it should have taken 20 minutes at most.

Third, walking limited what I could do by myself. I couldn’t really travel when my walking was bad. Getting around in a new city, much less in an airport was extremely difficult once walking became a challenge. Running errands, particularly to unfamiliar places where parking might have been limited became frustrating and inconvenient.

Most importantly, perhaps, walking became unsafe. Falls became more frequent and although I was never seriously injured I started to feel it was only a matter of time before something bad would happen.

Walking does have its advantages. If you can stand and walk, you can reach things that are higher up. You can maneuver up and down stairs. You can get into bathrooms with narrow doors. I am actually struggling to come up with any more examples, which is exactly my point about this article — our society is designed for walkers but I’m not convinced the advantages of walking are worth crying over once you’ve lost it.

There was a stretch of about five years when I could have benefitted from having a power wheelchair at my disposal but the thought never crossed my mind. Instead I let my limited walking ability keep me at home — rarely going outside or doing anything interesting. Going grocery shopping was the most exciting thing I could do at a moment’s notice because I could latch onto a shopping cart for balance. Aside from that, unless friends were going along or planning something, I usually stayed home.

All this time, I could still walk! A lot of good walking did me. It turned me into a hermit!

So that’s why when I see those news stories and Youtube videos about paralyzed people “walking” again with the help of an exoskeleton, I think to myself, “Meh…I’d rather have my wheelchair.” Not only to they have to strap the big honking thing on their legs, they only walk inches at a time and still have to use crutches to balance! What good is this if you can’t even carry something while you’re walking?

I do understand that these rudimentary “walking” devices are a step towards something better, but until then I’m fine using my wheelchair. These days I get in/out of the grocery store in ten minutes or less — faster than most people. And unlike most people, I can even sit while I am waiting in line.

I don’t regret starting to use a wheelchair full time even though I could probably have kept up some sort of walking for a time. Once I weighed the advantages over the disadvantages, it became an incredibly easy decision to give up on walking. And this is what I recommend: If using a wheelchair will make your life better overall, then use it.

Once you get used to it, you’ll discover that despite it’s drawbacks, using a wheelchair can have its advantages. I’ll write more about that in another post.