45. Journey to 10,000 Miles: A Story of Running, Stroke Recovery, and Resilience

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My name MS Rosemary. Welcome back to another episode of Lovell Soraya podcast.

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This week, I am back from a 2 month hiatus. I have been super busy with all the things. I am back in school for where for a master's in psychology. That has been going well. 1st term is coming to an end. Kids have been home from school. School's over. I did not even realize it's till right now.

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So we are halfway through the year. That is exciting. I know I've been off track this year with the episodes, but I am getting back on track. I have things in place that I'm really excited about. So, yeah. A lot to catch up on, a lot to talk about. This episode will kind of be a reprieve from hiatus, what's been going on, things in my life. Love to hear about what's been going on in your life.

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So, yeah. Tons to catch up on, and, we'll kinda go through it today. It's not gonna be a super in-depth episode, but because we're talking about probably I'm sure it's gonna crop up.

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It already has. We're talking about my master's program, so I will be talking about that and some things I'm looking forward to learning as I go through the program. So far, so good. Anyways, I think the big news right now is that it is the middle of summer, and so June just ended, and I just crossed 10, 000 miles, which is unreal to me.

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About 10, 10000 miles running since October 6, 2022, that's when I started tracking on Strava.

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You could try that from me there, but I probably will not be friends with you because, no offense, I use that just for me to track my running. I don't really care what other people are doing with their running.

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I know if I can run 10000 miles in under 21 months, you can too. 21 months will be later this week, so just shy I think it was 20 months and 3 weeks. So, yeah. I actually believe I broke through 10, 000 on last Thursday, but I wasn't fully sure. And then when I checked on Friday, and I, in fact, had. And that was great because that's just as everybody got back in town from Miami, so the family is back, the house is chaotic. That's the way life goes. As a stroke survivor, if you are 1 or no 1, you know it's not easy.

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You know, you know, this 2 month hiatus, I wasn't expecting it. I didn't have enough things in place. I thought I could just do it while doing school. I probably could have, but I really I got super focused in the beginning of May on, oh, I can really do this if I really commit to running even more than I already had. And, honestly, I just wanted to get to 10, 000. I gotta tell you, it's been a couple of days, almost a week, since I hit 10, 000, and I feel like I ran into a brick wall. I don't know if my body I don't know if it's a mental block right now. I'm still running quite a bit each day, but I am tired. I feel it. It has definitely started to hit MS, and you would have thought, oh, well, wouldn't that hit you sooner? You would have thought, but I think my body and my mind just really had a some point along the way, not in the beginning certainly, but definitely some point last year, things changed. And it might have been October because that was a really big month for me. That's why I started going full on keto.

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I started mixing in the treadmill with outdoor running, and I think the treadmill helped me get to a faster pace.

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So when I started, I was doing, like, a mile and a half, and that lasted a couple weeks. Probably almost the that October, I don't think I did more than a couple of miles a day for a while. So it was a slow progression, but it certainly accelerated quickly last year. I think I did 500 in October, November December of 2022. I wish I could tell you some magical lesson that I've learned in these 10, 000 miles. I mean, I've learned a couple things, but I don't know that I've reflected on it enough. I definitely have had a lot of time to think because I spent the better part of 4 or 5 hours a day for the last 600 and something days running, I would still not call myself, a traditional runner. I am not dainty. I do not have the greatest form because of the stroke, because of MS deficits.

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It's awkward. It feels awkward. I know it's awkward. I don't care. I just wanted to do this to this all started as a joke because I was, like, leaning forward when I was walking, and I was just like, you know what? I bet I could run. And then lo and behold, as a former athlete, it kind of comes back. You know, I no longer smoke cigarettes. I no longer drink. So it wasn't tremendously difficult to get back into the routine of running, but I gotta be honest. I am surprised that I got up each and every day for the last 630 something days and got after it. There are days I did not want to. There were only a handful of days that 1st year that I actually took off, and that's usually because I had some sort of medical hiccup. There were days I didn't there were definitely days I did not want to.

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For a long time, it took a while. It's kinda weird. I'm just reflecting in the moment here as I'm recording this podcast, but it's not for the faint of heart. It's not for everybody.

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It's not really to prove anybody wrong or to prove myself right. It was just something I started doing, and I noticed that my body and my brain and things were starting to feel better. Now, at 10, 000, I would say, in hindsight, I probably coulda scaled it back quite a bit and gotten the same results. If this was ever to lose weight, I have lost weight along the way.

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I am still calling myself £300, but I am significantly under£300. I wouldn't say I'm in the best shape of my life because in the last probably 2, 2 and a half months, I definitely have taken a step back from weight lifting just to get all the mileage in. So this towards the end became about the mileage, but really never was. Again, it started as a joke. I wound up seeing some pretty good benefits from it, you know, but I I've also lost a lot of toenails. I've lost a number of toenails. I have blisters. I, you know, 10000 miles in 21 months is more than my wife does and she's a real runner. It's more than most people do who are real runners, you know, except for probably a select few. It's a lot. It's taking a toll on my body, but I feel like the benefits have have outweighed not doing it. But yeah. So that that's kind of the precipice for why I was on a hiatus. Obviously, that includes the start of school. I'm finishing my first term at Southern New Hampshire University online, getting my master's in psychology.

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That's going well. I'm really enjoying that. It's, you know, where it leads is still TBD, but I've really dove in head first just like I did with the running. I've learned how to quiet my mind. I've learned to love running, which I never really loved. I enjoy the break that I get from doing it. I I don't think I need to do it as much now, but I like how I got into the routine eventually of running at least an hour in the morning and at least an hour in the evenings. I think that's good for my body and my schedule.

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Whatever I'm doing, it just gets me going for the day, and it also helps MS wind down at the end of the day. And in between that, you know, again, I lost some of the gym, meditation while working, you know, doing meditation breaks. It's been good. It's been rewarding. It's shown me the possibility. You know, I think early on, I was like, I need to do this for me because I wanna show other people, other survivors who listen to this show, who see me on social media, who see me, you know, wherever in groups here locally in Jacksonville. I just wanna show people that a stroke is not the end of your life. It can, in fact, be a new beginning and is often a new beginning. People take different different directions. They go on different paths.

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You know, this definitely was a rabbit hole that I wasn't expecting. But, again, I reaped a lot of benefits as a result of getting back into running. It's now a habit. It's almost an addiction. I have a hard time finding myself doing less miles per day now. Like, I just I keep pushing, and I gotta be careful, especially now that I've hit that 10, 000 because I don't really have another goal in mind other than to continue running and continue staying in good shape. So I think we can scale it back, But I've got to learn just because I can do it doesn't always mean you should do it. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's fine that I pushed these last couple of months, but now, you know, I've done a good job of over resting my my body, but I think I could do a better job. I think there's a better balance. I don't need to be spending 4 or 5 hours running per day, and I don't anymore. But that certainly was the case for a while. And it's, you know, what's great about running now is that I don't hate it. I don't dread it. I wanna go do it. So, you know, I don't need to do it as significantly long, but I love, like, I've gotten into a routine now with mixing in the treadmill. I I sit at the desk, I do work for an hour or 2, take a break, hop on the treadmill, do 20, 30 minutes, hop off, sit sit in my chair, do some more work, and it's a good routine for me. It's probably a good routine for anybody who works from home, who has access to workout equipment, whether that's a treadmill or an elliptical. It just gets you moving. I mean, I've seen all these things over the years because I've been working remotely for well over a decade and a half now. You know, you could put a treadmill under your desk if you're into it, but if you just have a treadmill and you just, you know, you have a luxury of working from home and you could throw on a hoodie or a t shirt and hop on throw some shorts on, hop on the treadmill, take a 20 minute break, come back, energized, refreshed, you know, you get a lot of things, a lot of benefits from running, you know. Obviously, I wouldn't work I'm doing it right now. I just got off the treadmill to record this podcast. Not always the recommended way to do things. I hop on the treadmill for 20 minutes in between calls. I get on the phone call. I'm sweating to death. I look like a hot mess, but generally, you know, there are calls that don't require me to be in a suit and tie on Zoom. There certainly are times when that's required and, you know, you put a buffer in so that you can still hop on the treadmill, but not maybe show up sweating to death where I am. You know, I'm not too bad right now, but it's not the best. Anyways, all that to say, well, that's all the reason for the break. Again, I I've been working on Survivor Science, the blog, the center, which is the survivor science community, that we'll talk about later. But working on a lot of things, including school, again, family life, balancing all of the things, putting some better systems in place for the podcast so that I can continue to do this show, because it's something I'm passionate about. I'm really passionate about just stroke recovery, my own stroke recovery, but sharing that journey. Again, it's kinda why I started the community, because I would have loved to have a community available to me to join, because I knew stroke was hard. I was 37. I was much younger than most strokes of ours. The pandemic happened, you know, very shortly after my stroke and diagnosis with MS, And I just I was, at that point, still at work, and I was talking to people, but I I just I didn't have access and resources to things like a community. I did a lot of digging. I did a lot of research. I did a lot of trial and error, all of which are valid and good and things you should do as a survivor, most likely in your case. But what if I had access to other people that were near my age, or just anybody to tell me, like, hey, I tried this and this worked for me. It may not work for you, but you could try it, you know. Because there's so many things.

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And I was going to outpatient therapy for many year. I mean, I still go every year a little bit, and I still go to group at at the same facility. And I talk to people often, and I talk to people online, and I'm starting to get more people into the community, and I'm starting to walk them through the process, and we're having conversations. It's just a resource that I am passionate about because I wish I had it personally when I first had my stroke and there was nothing. There's still nothing like it that I'm aware of. I'm sure there are stroke groups that people started and have, but either they don't advertise or I'm not aware of them, so maybe they lack, you know, a social media presence. Maybe a lot of people don't wanna run a community because it's not easy work. The reason I'm passionate and feel like I'm equipped for it is because I worked remotely for close to 15 years. I've been I've been online. I was a kid who grew up with AOL and Prodigy and all all the chat things. I was a part of that entire wave of the early Internet and well into until today. Not only have I worked in it and built part of the Internet and built websites at high levels, but I've also been a part of online communities. I've seen what other people do, and I enjoy what other people do. Sometimes, you know, I've been a part of many online communities that are great. They're just not specific to Stroke survivors, and I've gotten the same benefits that I hope others will get from survivor science in the center because you don't know what you don't know until you realize you didn't know that and that's how I felt about breathing. I've talked about this on the show endlessly. A lot of things that I've learned over the years And there are a lot of things that I found out on my own that I wish I found out sooner. I wish somebody would have mentioned it. You know, I just did this talk at my group, locally about breathing and how I wish I had found James Nestor's book 2 years before I did when it came out. Yeah. I think his book came out at the beginning of the pandemic in April of 2020. I didn't read till 2 years later. And then I realized, and, of course, as I usually do, I went way off the deep end, but I I love nasal breathing. I mean, I can't think of a better thing that I've learned throughout my journey as a stroke survivor than the power of nasal breathing. But again, remember, I was a smoker previously. I was a former athlete, but I became a smoker in high school and then continued on. And then I was drink I was doing a lot of bad things.

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I was overweight. I was breathing through my mouth predominantly most of my life because I never learned about nasal breathing and it still takes work. It still takes me work every day. I catch I just caught myself breathing through my mouth while I'm talking on the podcast. That's gonna happen. But, you know, when I'm I'm more cognizant of it now, so I I've just seen a lot of benefits as a result of nasal breathing that I cannot overstate. I could not overstate it to my group. I showed them some exercises like nasal unblocking.

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Like, the fact that I I didn't realize until I was 39 years old that you could unblock your nose naturally, not just blowing your nose constantly. It's a little bit of both, but, again, it's, there's a lot of things that I've learned. There are a lot of things that I've been inspired by. There are lots of things that I hope others can learn from my story. I do want people to realize, like, I don't wanna be an inspiration per se, but I wanna share the lessons that I've learned with people.

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And whether that's through this podcast or the online community with Survivor Science in the center, it doesn't matter how you find it or or, you know, just see making it available for people to find it. And, really, I have to do a better job both with this podcast and Survivor Science of promoting it because for a long time, I've been hesitant to promote myself because I was either unsure or just lacking confidence or frankly, sometimes just busy. I mean, I'm a father. I'm a stroke survivor.

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I have MS. I have a wife. I have a, you know, a busy a busy life. And I'm not big on excuses, but if I had to put 1, it's probably to my current that I don't promote my stuff and myself enough because I've never liked that. And, you know, you look at it and you're like, oh, this again. But, like, the truth is, if I don't keep promoting, if I don't keep doing this podcast, if I don't keep writing blog posts for survivor science, if I don't keep trying to promote the community and get more members in, you know, whether it's I'm gonna have opportunity for everybody where, you know, majority will be down the road. It'll be a paid community. Right now, it is invite only.

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I'm inviting in a certain number of people that I I sort of I have a kind of a cut off in my head where I'll cut it off before I turn it over to a paid community, but I am still inviting people in. I'll I'll put that information in the show notes, but you can go to vip.survivorescience.com, sign up, it's a little quick little form there, and that's just to to let me know that you want an invite. When I get a bunch, you know, just a couple at a time, and I have time, I'll invite those members in to join the community. And again, it's it's early days. I know we've been talking about it for almost a year and a half. Half. That's how long things take sometimes when you're a stroke survivor and you're running a business and you're doing different things, and you're running close to to your target goal of 10, 000 miles in 21 months, which, again, was never the initial goal, but just became the goal. It's well, you can imagine how things go. Things get busy, things get off track, and, you know, we're here. We're I'm building it. I think I'm gonna move over to TikTok more, Again, to promote the community, so we can get more members in to join because I wanna get I want people who wanna be a part of an online stroke community to take advantage of it. But right now, you know, and again, prices at the beginning, even if you don't get an opportunity to sign up early and become an early adopter member, I, I always wanna keep the prices within a reasonable range, whether that's there's gonna be multiple options so that we can have an inclusive, secure, safe, you know, I wanna build this smart. I don't wanna just build it in a piece, like, that's that's not me. If you know me personally, you would know that would be never how I'd do anything. But I think, as somebody who's running it by himself currently, I do wanna take time to onboard members, make sure the experience is, honestly, I want the experience to be excellent, but I know how building things in real time, it's not gonna be excellent. But I'm going to try my best to make it excellent, and I'm going to take the feedback that members of the community provide and and build the things that we wanna see and get the information people wanna learn about. You know, it's not designed by committee, but certainly when we have monthly calls and different chats, I want if somebody's wanting to learn about this, and somebody else wants to learn about that, and it's kinda split in the middle. We'll do different events to handle different scenarios and different age groups and cross things over. And again, it's not just for survivors, it's for caregivers, caretakers, family members, friends of Stroke survivors who are really interested in learning about it, whether they wanna learn to prevent a stroke themselves or learn how their friends might have changed and talk to other people, other survivors and learn from them and and, you know, physical therapy teams and and all the people that go into Stroke recovery. This is not exclusive to just survivors. It it's really meant for anybody who wants to, you know, come back from a major life event. Stroke is a priority, but there's no reason we couldn't have heart attack survivors or even I mean, can could be cancer survivors. I don't think heart attack and stroke are a little bit more. Well, you know, I'm not gonna say no, and I'm not gonna say it again, it's inclusive. I just don't know. I just I don't know if there are different resources for cancer survivors, so there may be other groups that would be would maybe make more sense.

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But, again, as things evolve and things grow and the community, we start, you know, doing courses and and things that people wanna see. They're I'm sure there's opportunity both for crossover and, you know, if the price price can stay affordable, which I hope I plan on making the price pretty affordable for a long time so people come in. They come in for a brief time. They come in long term. You know?

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I think, initially, the pricing that I'm doing, you know, again, it's free right now. If you want an invite, you can go to vip.survivorsofscience.com, sign up, put in your email, a little bit of info, and I will send out the invite to invite you into the community. The early adopters will get the biggest say in helping grow the community, helping shape it. I have a plan. I have things already in place, but they're I'm open to lots of things. I built it as as sort of, like, oh, this would be great if I had just found this 5 years ago. I would love this, but I know there there are plenty of things that I like, aphasia. We just had the aphasia month, ophasia awareness month. I did not you know, I have a little dysarthia, but not really I didn't really suffer from aphasia. So I'm pretty clueless when it comes to that.

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And I don't know how people with aphasia might wanna communicate online in this type of space. And I wanna make it, again, open and inclusive to all parts of stroke. So I'd be looking for help with that.

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And what are the different rooms or things that you would like to see MS somebody in that situation? Or what if you are, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. We're all different. Right? Stroke is so different.

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There's a lot of shared common ground, but there are very vast differences or strokes of others that are well under 30.

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You know, now I'm 41. I can't even imagine being a stroke survivor in my twenties, but I also couldn't imagine being a stroke survivor in my thirties. But I have experience with my thirties and being a stroke survivor. I think it'd be very different if I was in my twenties and I wasn't married. Yet at the time, like, what about dating after a stroke? I mean, there's so many questions, so many topics, and I don't wanna make anything off limits in the community, obviously. I think if you I mean, this is a taboo topic, but I'll talk about it. Using the restrooms after Stroke can be very difficult, especially if your dominant hand is affected, and mine was. And that was not an easy thing to figure out initially and took some time. I needed help. I was paralyzed down the entire right side of my body. My right side was my dominant side.

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I figured it out relatively quickly, but it wasn't as quick as I would like. So I had to have I remember being in a inpatient for the first time. And for, like, the 1st week, I tried to get my wife to never leave, and then finally, I just had to kinda get over it and be like, you know what? I can't do anything about this. I need to ask the nurses for help. It was super uncomfortable. I'm laughing now just because in hindsight, it wasn't that big a deal, but I felt uncomfortable, and I'm sure a lot of people do. I'd do a 2 hour talk if you felt like it was necessary. That's what I mean about bringing people into the community. It's, you know, sharing stories, sharing knowledge, what are the tools, I found nasal breathing.

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That worked for me. That's how I got just crossed 10000 miles of running.

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I never thought I'd be a runner, a traditional runner ever in my life, and I'm still not a traditional runner, but I certainly never thought I would have gotten to 10000 miles in 21 months. That I can say, hands down, I never thought would happen. I certainly never thought it would happen after I had a stroke diagnosed with MS. I mean, it didn't happen right away. I did not start running till almost just shy of my 3 year stroke anniversary. So, you know, never say never. It's a good lesson and story, I think, to share because you hear a lot of things and a lot of myths with stroke about how you can't recover after this amount of time. And to be fair, I've never actually really heard that. I think it's just something people say, but I don't know that it's actually a reality because I can't remember anybody saying that to me in the early days. They definitely said it takes time and it'll be a process, but nobody really told me, like, oh, you can only recover. Like, maybe. If anybody said anything, they may have said, your studies show that your best chance of recovery in large magnitudes is within the 1st year, but again, I say that with caution. I'm not even sure anybody said that.

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And to be fair, I mean, I did start walking again at the end of the 1st year, so maybe there's a little bit of truth there, but take it with a grain of salt. It's very individualized. And there are people that have recovered from Stroke that were in a really difficult spot where they couldn't do much of anything in the 1st year, but they they have managed to get better over time I know a few personally so don't take it all with a grain of salt and just work on yourself, and that's what I've done the entire journey. Even since starting this podcast and I started this podcast a little after I started running, so this podcast only been going for about a year and a half now. And, again, it will continue to go. I will continue to keep things on a a smarter track now that I've gotten school back into the mix. I did take this little hiatus the last 2 months, but I think the things are on track. I know how to organize work, school, and all the things in my life. There's gonna be a hiccup. There's probably gonna be a week off randomly here and there. Going to try to avoid that, but also sometimes I think as a podcaster and a content creator and a business owner, sometimes you just need a break. I'm bad at recognizing when I need a break. Like, I will go go go just like this 10, 000 mile and see the brick wall coming. At the end of 10, 000 miles, I'm not convinced it's there. I'm try I tried really hard to push through this week, but I think maybe the lesson here MS, for me too, is to just sometimes you just need a week, you need a break, nothing you can do about it. Listen to your body, listen to your brain. And that's the thing. I don't feel I feel great, but the running this week has been a little more work than it was the first 10, 000. So I'm trying to listen to that, but I'm trying to kinda test it and push through a little bit and just like today, I did a little walking and I was like, even this isn't, like I don't know. Anyways, some of the things we could talk about. I know I've been run I'm trying to see how so we're about 30 minutes in. So yeah. So I learned a lot both about myself and running. The 10, 000 miles has been enjoyable. I realized things like the nasal breathing, how important that MS. I think that has very much drastically changed my life for the better in a variety of ways. Obviously, nasal breathing, but also for circulation, you could say the running is part of the circulations in the last 21 months, I guess, since starting running and whether that's propelled by breathing, whether that was originally started by Peloton and biking. But before that, I was working out and going to the gym. I'm still going to the gym. Yeah. It's a big milestone. I am definitely proud of myself. It is a little bit of a brag, and this kinda ties into the psychology degree that I'm going for, my master's in psychology. It's more about learning about the ability to sort of go beyond the perceived limits. You know, this I think this would be a milestone for anybody, and I think it it just for me, it feels like a little bit of a bigger mile sound just because I am a stroke survivor with MS. This seems drastically different, but the process and the reason why are kind of the same. Like, I just wanna show I mean, I've always been somebody who likes to challenge, who likes pushing himself. I could I I would have preferred to do this not being a stroke survivor or never having been diagnosed with MS, but they certainly helped me realize that I can't take anything in life for granted. Prior to my stroke and prior to NS, I took a lot of things for granted, and I still struggle with taking things for granted sometimes you don't realize what you have until you don't have it so it could have been easier but I'm not any less proud of myself for doing this, and I I'm not setting out to be an inspiration. I just really wanna show people that you can achieve what you really want to achieve if you set your mind to it and if you put the goals and the steps to get to those goals in place. I know that it sounds corny. It's probably something you've heard before, but I believe myself wholeheartedly now that that is, in fact, very much true. I know I was saying that ties into the psychology degree and the master's degree, very similar. I kind of started it as a joke. I mean, I think everything I say sometimes starts as a joke because I don't want to let myself down if I don't want to continue on with something. So I make it sound like a joke to everybody until it becomes Stroke, and then I'm proud of myself for being able to do something and achieve something.

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But, yeah, the message is not a joke. I try to find the funny in things. I I didn't really start running as a joke. I just wanted see, like, hey, let's see. Let's say, see how this goes. I never expected it to go this way. And the same is very true very much as true for the master's program that that I'm in. I'm really interested in psychology. I went to school for architecture.

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It's 20 years since I graduated from the University of Miami or, I guess, 18 now. The program for architecture is very specific, so you don't get a big opportunity to take a variety of classes. I took a few, but even not even that, I had a minor in business. So I took, you know, my minor courses were business focused.

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I never took a psychology class. I never took a statistics class. I took AP Calcutta, but I've never taken a statistics class until this past term at the age of 41 years old. Now I've used statistics my whole life. I've taken the class. I'm going through the motions. I think there's a very big difference between statistics, of course, and statistics in the real world. But when you hear people talk about data and statistics, you know, I've always been on the fence about it. When practicality, sometimes it's very relevant and sometimes it's not as relevant. And I think that depends on the person, place, time, reason for using it, etcetera. But, yeah, psychology so I was I was kinda torn between neuroscience and psychology, but I think because I'm not, you know, I wound up going the psychology route because I'm more interested in cognitive psychology, the not so much the inner workings of the brain but like the way people think, why we think the way we think, how we think. I think cognitive psychology is is the perfect balance for me because it is the the psychology world mixed with the neuroscience world. So it's a it's a bit of crossover and if you've taken psychology classes or you have a degree in psychology, you know, a lot of things overlap. Right? In fact, I'm dealing with that now because you could say I could go in a number of directions like cognitive psychology, which I like because it is cognitive psychology and brain science. I love sports. Yeah. I could see myself in sports psychology. I love leadership and building teams and team dynamics and both from the leadership from an individual perspective and team perspective. All of that is fascinating to me.

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Again, a lot of the fields cross over. I mean, typically, like, forensic psychology probably doesn't intersect with cog I mean, they all do to some degree, but I'm kind of focused on the cognitive side.

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Like, IO psychology is very interesting to me. Some of the parts of IO is not as interesting to me, which is why I'm not fully committed to IO, but I'm looking at cognitive psychology from, like the the lens always changes a little bit. I guess it's the best way to say that. It's like I love sports. I love leadership. I love organizations.

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So, like, when you combine all those things and you think about sports and sports psychology and teams and, like, what does it take to build, shape, mold winning team? Like, I'm fast endlessly fascinated by that. But, like, the leadership part too. Right? I think sometimes people get so x, y, and z about leadership, but leadership is way beyond the you can't follow a set of steps typically. I mean, sometimes you can, and it's certainly a good place to start. But it's much more complex than that, which I think we all kind of realize. So I'm just endlessly fascinated by leadership and what it takes to build yourself as an individual, to be a leader, to to understand other people, to have empathy, to have clarity, to have still to deal with things like, you know, volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and uncertainty it's the term is VUCA but as some people know it some people overuse it things come and go in waves and things that were overstated 2 months ago are now understated 2 months later and vice versa. I think we all realize what the world MS going through.

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That's been part of the running thing too is how do you lead yourself back from a stroke when you're down I know we're not hopping into things I've recently watched, but I just saw Dana White on Shannon Sharpe's podcast and it just like, he said a couple of things that resonated with me, which is like setbacks, overcoming setbacks, and like, I feel kind of the same way sometimes. It's like, I don't mean to make life difficult, but sometimes I enjoy when things are difficult breaking through and whether it's just myself as an individual or it's me in a team scenario, like, saying it, hey, team. I gotcha. Like, I may not know all the answers. I may not have all the core you know, in fact, I very rarely have all the answers, if ever. If if I have all the answers, you should be worried. But, yeah, I like a challenge. I like when things are hard. But if when things are difficult and things are challenging, that's that's really where I thrive.

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Again, I would have rather not been to strokes forever. I never envisioned that as part of my life plan. I never envisioned having MS.

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I certainly could understand how it would be much different if things were not this hard. But again, I like a challenge.

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And, you know, I think I've said it before on this podcast. I think I'm built for things like this. Would I rather have not gone through it?

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Obviously. I think that goes without saying. But if you know, I'm happy to be back. I know I'm off on tangents.

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I I'm really excited to be back doing the podcast on a regular basis. I'm gonna really try hard to do every week a new episode. We're gonna see how long that can go. I think we're good.

00:36:40.153 --> 00:37:45.559
Kinda winding down. Maybe give me, you know, 1 or maybe we'll go for 3 here at the end of July. And then in August, when everybody's back in school at my house, at least, we can get back to 4, 4 or weekly for that matter. But, yeah, if I can leave you with a final thought and some things, I mean, there's tons of things to watch. I know we usually talk about that. I've been watching a lots of I'm getting older because I'm starting to go watch things like SCU, and I'm looking for any series that never has more than 2 or 3 seasons that I can really like to dig into a series. As you can imagine, if I run 10, 000 miles, I'd spent number of hours per day digging into running. I like a a little bit of a challenge. I like some fast I like some meat on the bones, when it comes to TV shows. So I'm, like, giving you too many thoughts this week on that. But, yeah, final thought. Remember, when it comes to recovery or really anything in life, achieving your goals, I know it sounds crazy. Right? Like, it's so annoying because people are like, if you believe it could happen, it can happen.

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I don't know that that's always the case, but I really think if you wanna put your mind to something and you do it And I've heard people you know, people always talk about consistency.

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But I think running this this this 10, 000 miles really proved to me that, like, if you get up, even when you don't want to, and you're tired, and you keep doing it, and you just keep going, and you stay motivated, and you stay dedicated, that even on the bad running days, and there have been many bad running days, Probably the last 5 for sure. Right? I've had many of those along the way.

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Sometimes you maybe can't do 15 or 20. You can only do 5 or 10, or maybe you can only do 1. But 1 is better than none. And I know that sounds cheesy and cliche, but I really believe if you stick it out, if you grind through it, you know, within reason, of course, you don't wanna overextend or hurt yourself.

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If it's just you don't wanna do it that day and you push through that, I think you can you could really see the benefits. You don't have to go for 10, 000. Start with a 100. You know, whatever your goal is, break it down into manageable bite size.

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Or even like I do, just start. Right? Just start. Don't have any expectations. I didn't start with expectations. I didn't add those until later on. So that is something to keep in mind too. I just I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to kinda touch base with everybody.

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I believe the next episode so I'm gonna focus specifically on the spasticity next episode. Really wanna dig into that topic.

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Part of being back at school, I have access to other things that I might not have otherwise had access to previously for a while without paying a lot more money. A local school is not free.

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But yeah. So I'm gonna do some research, get some things that I have not experienced. I have a friend from the group who has some specific questions that I'll try to answer and at least dig into or start to dig into. Again, that's part of the community thing.

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Head over to vip.survivorscience.com. It is sort of separate from survivorshipcience.com itself. That's where I write the blogs. The community is the other portion. It's called the center. I'm probably gonna fix the website this week to make things a little bit more clear. So, yeah, we're working on that. Anyways, thanks for tuning in. I know I dragged on. I know it's been a minute. I'm sorry I'm out of practice, but, yeah, I'm excited to be back. I hope you're excited to be tuned in for the summer going into the fall, and bye for now.