Early on the morning of Saturday, February 11, 2017, Jim Rothblatt met me at my house to load my recumbent trike into the back of his truck. Clouds dotted the sky to the south and the sun was still undecided as to what it was going to do. The weather was perfect for riding.
In separate cars, Jim and I weaved our way across town to South Palm Canyon where we parked and he unloaded our bikes. As he unloaded the bikes from his truck, I began to put on my helmet, and set my Strava phone app to record our ride.
Today would be a different type of ride. Jim is working on perfecting a method of tandem towing which is a way to assist riders, like me, with disabilities to lift the limitations from their riding experience.
For those of you who are not familiar with my story, I suffered a non-traumatic spinal cord injury in 2010 resulting in paraplegia. My recovery moves at its own pace and I no longer try to dictate or predict progress or outcomes. I am now content to enjoy the process and am careful not to miss out on enjoying life and all its wonders.
This day of experimentation was one of those days filled with wonder. Ernie Smith, who rides and electric assist bike, met up with us to help carry out the experiment. Jim used his idea to connect my recumbent trike to Ernie’s electronic assist bike. Ernie rode ahead of me and provided me with assistance in areas and on terrain where I was not strong enough to navigate on my own.
Our ride today was recreational in nature, but for me it quickly became quite a bit more. The therapeutic value of tandem towing should be explored. There were segments of the ride where my cycling cadence almost felt natural and I didn’t have to think about each revolution of the pedal.
This method of tandem towing opened up an entirely new world for me as a rider. I got to experience the beauty and serenity of our wonderful desert, gaze up at snow capped mountains while listening to the stream on my right, all while being completely enveloped by the aroma of the creosote bush.
Seriously, how can any one person be more blessed than this!
you are so awesome and so is this blog i ran into while i was researching updates on transverse myelitis. my brother who is 47 was diagnosed almost 2 yrs ago. he was taking care of my father in the hospital (who passed away that weekend suddenly) and had to leave because he was feeling extremely tired; he went home and i went to the hospital to visit my dad and at the same moments my dad suddenly had a reaction to a blood transfusion my brother was in an ambulance to the ER himself. they sent him back home and told him to deal with the pain at home. the pain and not being able to walk made him call the ER again so they ran xrays and told him everything looked fine and sent him home again. He was home an hour again and called another hospital we have in Corpus Christi (my home town in Tx) and they did more xrays because last hospital lost them and they said they would have to send him to San Antonio Texas. We had our services for our father and he could not be here. They sent him back to Corpus and he was finally diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis after a month. No one treated him with the steroids or the plasma exchange as they should have. His appointments are only once a year in San Antonio. It seems as though no one is equipped down in South Texas to handle Transvers Myelitis.
Hello Melissa. Im so happy that you like my blog! Thank you 🙂
First let me say that I am sorry that you have experienced so much in such a short time span because that can make it more difficult to process. But you sound like a strong person so I’m sure you are going to be just fine.
It seems that many of the people that I talk to about TM have had similar experiences such as yours. It is very unfortunate because the earlier a diagnosis is made and treatment begins will have a significant affect on recovery (as is the case with most everything).
You didn’t mention how TM physically affected your brother. In my case, I had some issues that the physicians here in my area were not equipped to handled so I had to “insist” of my insurance carrier that they refer me to an out of area physician. It seems as if you have had to do the same thing.
Encourage your brother to keep moving both physically and mentally. If he ever needs an ear to listen, I am available. Not that your ears aren’t good enough (haha) its just that sometimes our families and the people who are the closest to us have a hard time, emotionally, processing how we feel sometimes and so the tendency can be just to remain silent.
Again, thank you for liking my blog. Many blessings to you and your family!