They Had a Plan for Me. I Found Another One.

At 55, there was a plan for my body.

Actually, several plans.

Both feet.

My right knee.

My lower back.

My shoulder.

A possible hip replacement.

I also had type 2 diabetes and was carrying 98 extra pounds, so medication was part of the conversation too.

Nobody was plotting against me.

Nobody was sitting behind a desk thinking, How can we keep Dave coming back for the next twenty years?

They were looking at the guy sitting in front of them.

And frankly, that guy was a mess.

Their recommendations made sense based on what they saw.

What none of us knew was how much that body could still change.

I Didn’t Reject Medicine

I changed direction.

There’s a difference.

I started paying attention to food.

I lost weight.

I started moving.

Then I discovered resistance stretching, and that changed things dramatically for me.

The body that had seemed to be headed toward one procedure after another started behaving differently.

One by one, those surgeries stopped being part of the conversation.

My type 2 diabetes eventually went into remission.

And the future I’d thought was pretty much mapped out...

wasn’t.

That Changed How I Think About Prognosis

A doctor can tell you what they’re seeing today.

They can tell you what usually happens.

They can tell you what the evidence suggests.

That’s valuable information.

But none of us can know exactly what happens next.

That’s where I think we sometimes get ourselves into trouble.

We hear:

“This is where you’re headed.”

And somewhere inside our heads it becomes:

“This is where I have to go.”

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Sometimes surgery is absolutely the right answer.

Sometimes medication is.

Sometimes physical therapy is.

Sometimes changing how you eat, move, sleep or live changes the situation enough that the original plan changes too.

And sometimes you do everything you possibly can and still need the surgery.

Life doesn’t give guarantees.

Nineteen Years Later

I’m 72.

I take no regular medications.

Those surgeries never happened.

I teach movement classes.

I get on the floor.

I get back up.

I walk.

I stretch.

I move through my life without spending much time thinking about the list of things that were supposed to go wrong with me.

I’m enormously grateful for that.

But I’m also careful about what lesson I take from it.

My story doesn’t prove that you can avoid your surgery.

It doesn’t prove you can stop your medication.

It certainly doesn’t mean you should ignore your doctor because some guy named Dave on the internet got better. 😂

It proves something much smaller.

And, I think, much more useful.

Sometimes there’s more room to change than we realize.

You Still Have a Part in the Plan

That’s the piece I wish I’d understood earlier.

Your healthcare team has a job.

So do you.

They can diagnose.

Treat.

Operate.

Prescribe.

Explain.

Guide.

And sometimes save your life.

You have another set of jobs.

You can move.

Eat.

Sleep.

Ask questions.

Do the exercises.

Pay attention to how your body responds.

Get a second opinion when something doesn’t make sense.

Try something different when it’s reasonable and safe to do so.

And keep participating instead of assuming the next chapter has already been written.

That’s not rejecting medicine.

That’s being part of your own healthcare.

At 55, there was a plan for me.

It wasn’t a bad plan.

It just wasn’t the plan I ultimately needed.

I’m awfully glad I found out.