What Keeps You Going?

[Wellspotted]

Sometimes I wonder why I do.

I haven’t been on a horse in over a year now. No opportunities.

I tried helping out at two different therapy barns – one only wanted people who can lead or side-walk a therapy horse for an entire lesson. I can’t. The other barn let me help groom and tack up and I loved that but then they canceled some lessons for cold, then it snowed, then my meds got changed and made me feel like crap, so I told the program director I couldn’t help for awhile … would love to go back and just help as much as I can, but haven’t heard back from this text to the director.

I know a lot of people here on COTH think that I should just get out and get a job but they don’t seem to realize that I really CANNOT walk to the bus line (and I have no other transportation. Even getting to the therapy barn was iffy some days).

Not having a pity party here, and I do have some good friends in real life, just the friends where I live aren’t horsey, and my horse friends don’t live in the same town as I do.

So, what keeps you going when you really just can’t manage on your own?

[Jackie_Cochran]

Hi Wellspotted,
It was 5 years for me, and I owned riding horses at that time (MS).
I finally begged at regular riding stables (concentration 4-H/hunt seat) for lessons, just 30 minutes and I can’t catch the horse, and grooming and tacking up are iffy. All I had going for me was 40 years of riding and experience on some HOT horses.
I found TWO public stables near me that let me ride for cheap. I can’t do much but the ladies LIKE what I get the horses to do (I get a lot of "I’ve never seen him/her do that before.) I pay for my riding, but when the weather cooperates and I ride 3X a week I spend just $45.00 a week to ride 3 different horses for 30 minutes at a time. This includes one lesson with the best riding teacher I’ve had in my life plus someone else does all the work getting the horse ready and I always have someone in or just outside the ring in case I need help.
It took me years to set it all up though. Riding horses is the best physical therapy for MS, I NEED to ride so I can keep walking on my own two feet. Luckily for me both ladies who help me ride get a kick keeping me walking and appreciate every little bit of money I give them to help feed the horses.

[Wellspotted]

What a great situation for all of you, Jackie! I enjoyed reading your post. I, too, feel I walk and move around a lot better when I have been able to ride.

[RMJacobs]

I am just downright stubborn and pigheaded, and I really believe that is what keeps me going 17 years after developing rheumatoid arthritis. But I could not keep going without my husband, who comes up with amazing ways to make things easier for me. He does all the horse care (horses at home), and comes up with creative ways to minimize the impact of my disability.

I did have to stop riding and start driving instead, but I am just grateful to still have horses in my life.

I am once again pondering my working life as I work in a high stress job (system support). It is nearly all mental, not physical, as long as I can still type, read, and think, and all of those are still easy. But the hours are really making me wonder how long I can keep this up. I’m discouraged because I worked over 40 hours Monday through Friday last week, then put in another 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday. That’s not the norm for me, but it does happen, and I am currently totally fried.

I think all of us with disabilities struggle mentally quite often to keep a good attitude, make the best of what we can do, not dwell on what we can’t do. It’s very hard to see people around you living a “normal” life and taking it totally for granted, while some days just getting out of bed is a major accomplishment. Somehow we still do it, even on the worst days, but it makes sense that it really gets us down sometimes.

Rebecca

[the_other_mother]

What keeps me going? It beats the alternative! :yes:

[Laurierace]

Any chance you live near me Wellspotted? I need help keeping my schoolmaster going while I am laid up. He is the ultimate packer.

[_Teddy]

What keeps me going? Sometimes i just dont know, to be honest ive learned to numb myself but sometimes its not even possible.

Im a bad person to give this kind of advice

But if ya need a internet buddy to talk to i listen well

[_Teddy]

Remembered, i like lose myself in music ALOT.

[Couture_TB]

What keeps me going is I refuse to except the alternative. Every day between the Lyme disease, Bartonella, and my many leg surgeries I wake up in pain and end the day in agony. But I refuse to not at least spend some time with my horses. I am lucky in that I have them at home. I just started riding this week after a year off from my last surgery. I can not train at the moment, and who knows if again, so I started another buissness making and selling quality soaps in horse theme molds and a new breed mold line.

This week I rode three days this week. And even did two point for 5min. Ya for a person who use to do upper level eventing and jumpers that doesn’t sound like much but to me it was. I am breeding my mare in hopes of being sounder and healthier for when I can start her baby.

If anyone lives near me I am always looking for hacking partners, and have a super quiet stocky trail pony who anyone can take out and ride.

And the fact that my DH would move heaven and earth to help me be able to just enjoy my horses a few days a week and for me to get better. That is the only thing thing that really has kept me from sinking into a deep depression and just gibinbg up all together.

ETA: alcohol helps. Only joking a little here. At night some wine helps me relax and takes the edge off the pain.

[romewhip]

I have reconnected with wine of late- one glass, in the evening, and it does help the getting the nerves to stop firing and the pain to ratchet down slightly. My grandmother swore by a glass of red wine each evening, and I’m beginning to wonder if she wasn’t on to something…

[beaujolais]

“glass of red wine each evening”

Oh, yes, yes,yes!!! I believe it has antiinflammatory properties.

Lately I’m loving ChocolateRouge, a slightly chocolate flavored red wine.

[Zuri]

I was a critical care RN and active horse person up until 5 years ago. I blew out my lumbar spine fusion pushing an obese patient, resulting in agonizing pain. Three months later, I had near fatal Swine Flu Pneumonia that has left me with brain deficits and a host of medical issues. I am blessed to be alive as I am the only survivor out of 15 people in the US who had Swine Flu Pneumonia that month and year. Healthy people getting sick and dying from that dreaded flu virus. I went from 60-0 in a blink of an eye. I spend my days in bed pretty much as the pain is horrific and my brain doesn’t work too well.

With that said, I have found other ways to get my horse fix. I make it work. I refuse to give in to self pity and the sheer isolation total disability brings. Although I rarely go to the barn or see the 3 horses that I own, go to horse shows to watch my daughters ride or breathe in the scent of horses that soothes my soul, I do other things. I decided to breed. I research stallions and blood lines and read everything I can to educate myself on conformation and movement. I reach out to the kind people on these forums with questions. I am breeding 2 mares this spring with the help of my fab breeder/trainer and my vet. This gives me joy.

I will go to Devon again this year to watch my filly show in Hunter Breeding with the help of my family. Although I can’t participate in the hands on care that used to fulfill me, just being there to watch fills my heart. You can only do what you can do and it is what it is. Acceptance. Making the best of it. That is what we did anyway before life threw us a curve ball. JMV

[dm]

What keeps me going??

I lived a charmed life, health- and mobility-wise, until mid 2010 when I started having groin and back pain. It took forever and a bunch of different doctors to get correctly diagnosed–even had a hysterectomy that I didn’t even need (mistaken diagnosis for the groin pain). While all this was going on for a year and a half, I got to the point where I was tripping with my leg, had to start using a cane, and had trouble walking more than a couple hundred feet at a time.

Since that time, I’ve connected with better doctors and a great physical therapist. I’ve had a bunch of back and hip injections, both hips replaced, surgery to have tendons released/repaired from post hip replacement physical therapy injuries (grrrr–don’t let anyone push you when your body is saying otherwise!), complications from the tendon surgery when I developed a hematoma on my leg the size of a large football and had to have 2 additional surgeries for that, as well as hang out with a wound vac machine hooked up to my leg for a couple of months. I was so weak after that mess that walking just 100 feet exhausted me and it took months to build myself back up to just being able to walk a mile. But then other things went bad …

I rode my good QH mare a few times for 15 minutes or so at a time, mostly at a walk around my property last fall for the first time in 3 years, and I plan to start riding again after the tendon surgery recovery–again very slowly and carefully. I figure 10 minutes at a walk is better than no riding at all. I’m hoping to build myself back up to being able to trail ride for an hour or two. Just have to proceed carefully and very slowly.

This winter–2 arm surgeries. Tomorrow, having a peroneal tendon tear repair in my ankle, and then I will need to have an Achilles tendon surgery after that in a few months to repair degeneration and tears in that tendon. Seems like my body has weakened and it doesn’t take much to screw something up with the most innocent wrong move.

My body has taken a beating, but I refuse to give up and think of myself as a disabled person. Even after the hip replacements, I hobbled out to the barn with my walker to fill the water tub for the horses, feed some grain, or whatever else I could handle. My surgeon gave me restrictions and said I could do anything I wanted as long as I stayed within them. I figured out how to do some things during that time by getting creative. My horses and my dogs are what keep me going, positive, and working hard to get things back together best I can.

I’ve had several people tell me that I should get rid of the horses, but I just won’t hear of it. Worse comes to worse, if I get to the point where I can’t handle horse chores at home, I will board. I HAVE to have horses in my life and I love owning my own horse.

I’m more fortunate than many in that medically I’m doing well–I don’t have diabetes, auto-immune disease, heart disease, etc. It’s just tough to be in your early 50’s and go through a seemingly never ending series of problems and surgeries that never give your body a chance to strengthen in between.

I’m not sure exactly what physical problems the OP has going on, but if possible, try to think of ways you can do horse things you want to do by being creative and resourceful. Figure out what you ARE capable of doing, and work with that–figure out a way to make it happen. For example, when I walked out to my horses with my walker shortly after the hip replacements, I had a couple of chairs placed along my route through my yard so I could stop and rest. I carried my cell phone with me all the time so I could call someone for some help if I needed to (Oh, I forgot to mention, I live alone). I found a reliable teenager in the area who does my horse care when I’m recovering from surgeries. I also have a good friend who does the heavier stuff with the horses on the weekends, such as carrying the grain from the vehicle to the feed room, pushing the wheelbarrow through the deep snow, etc. My horses are out on pasture with a run-in arrangement so I don’t have as much manure/stalls to clean, I only have to feed hay during the winter, and I pay extra to have my winter hay delivered and stacked–my days of tossing around 300 bales of hay are long gone.

Sometimes you have to get pretty creative and resourceful to keep the horse dream alive, but it can be done for many people who have physical problems.

Best of luck.