Pushy Patients Save

A lupus patient of mine came in a few months ago. She was dressed in her workout gear. It was a Monday - a national holiday - and a good day for medical follow-ups and a workout. I’m very proud of this patient. She takes her meds, gets her labs, asks good questions and since she started exercising, she has total control of her lupus! I’d like to think that my repeated questions about exercise or my suggestions for exercise has inspired her, but she deserves the credit for initiative, follow through and obvious results.

As I sat, I commented on her exercise garb and asked what is her plan for exercise today? She said she was going to climb stairs – 50 flights today, since she was training for the upcoming Bid D climb. (The big D climb is a fund raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society wherein participants climb the 70 stories of the Bank of America Tower in Dallas.)

I’m sure my face contorted incredulously as I asked “why in the world would you do such a thing?” I’m wondering is this cerebritis or an elevator phobia? She said, “I never thought I could do such a thing, so I’m gonna try – you should too, Dr. Cush!” She doesn’t know of my unhealthy despise for stairs, based on bone-on-bone knee OA and years of not exercising enough.

We concluded our visit and she again suggested I join the climb. I laughed it off and proclaimed my love for escalators, but this thought of climbing 70 flights without needing CPR just gnawed at me for days.

Since I had bilateral knee replacements 4 years ago, I go to the gym 3-5 days a week, have done the 5k Turkey Trot every year, can walk all day long throughout Rome or Paris, but there are certain aerobic feats I probably won’t try, including the attempt at stairway to heaven. I mean hell.

Then lightning struck again. A long time RA patient emails me challenging me and my staff to join her in the Big D Climb. What is this, a conspiracy? Are my patients out to humble me or punish me for my demanding style of care? Then I read this article about a woman with RA who ran 127 miles (http://buff.ly/1SOr7ec)!

Patients like this are a blessing. With or without your coaching, they impress you with their amazing feats, unstoppable audacity to show themselves and the world that a disability will not define them. Dis-ability to them is a disease that challenges their abilities. They can choose to be the lupus gal who ran a marathon or the lupus gal who believes she can never run a marathon.

So for the past 5 weeks I’ve been a stair-climbing fool. Up and down, over 10,000 steps, sweating and panting in buildings that have perfectly functioning elevators and no security to drive me away.

Tomorrow, I join my patients and our Team of 8 (Tower of Power) to raise funds for cancer research. A pledge to sponsor me in this really bad idea would be greatly appreciated – you can find the LLS.org site here.

Pictures, EMT reports and future plans to follow.