Whether you have a valentines or celebrate Alentines Day remember to take a moment to love and appreciate your body.

After living with chronic arthritic pain I understand the love hate relationship someone can have with their body.  I felt like my body was fighting me and preventing me from reaching my full potential.  I was often couch or bed ridden simply when it rained… it just didn’t seem fair (and it wasn’t).  But there were also times when my body took me further than it should have been been able to.  Such as my trip to England in 2015 and the Adventure Race I completed 5 days prior to learning I needed bilateral hip replacements.  I often neglected or just simply overlooked what my body was trying to protect me from or prevent me from doing.  I sometimes found this easy to do simply because the pain was my normal and I knew nothing else.

During surgery, post-surgery and during rehabilitation the body makes miracles happen.  Let’s think about it for a moment.  Someone cut me open, sawed off the head of my femur, ground down my hip socket, hammered a dagger into my femur, screwed some bone and a metal socket into my pelvis and moved my leg all over the place.  I then wake up from surgery and knew that my body was going to heal.

While physiotherapy is something I did to help my body heal and repair itself, it does a whole lot on it’s own.  The exercises I did several times a day was nothing in comparison to everything that was happening inside my body.  Things that were done instinctively without me specifically asking.  My liver and kidney’s processing my pain medication, my soft tissue repairing from the trauma of surgery, my incision closing up and my bone growing and attaching to their new counterparts.

Thinking through this entire process blows my mind every time.  I had a 7-8 inch incision on each hip and they are all healed up.  My hips work, my legs move and I am walking and functioning daily pain free.

I could never thank my body enough for all of the hard work it has done so far in my life.  From functioning with chronic pain to pulling me through the surgical process.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Love,

Kaitlyn