I am not a natural-born exerciser. No one in my family was athletic. There were no evening walks and no one played sports. We didn’t run unless we were being chased. When I was first diagnosed with lupus, my rheumatologist told me I needed to walk half an hour every day. I thought he was crazy. I couldn’t walk from one end of my house to the other without being out of breath.
As it turns out, that was the standard advice I got from every doctor I saw. But I finally found one who explained it differently. He said that if I was only able to walk for 5 minutes, then that is where I should start. Stay at 5 minutes for a couple of weeks and then expand to 10 minutes. This way I could slowly work up to being able to walk for 30 minutes.
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The next roadblock I threw up was that there wasn’t a good place to walk near my house. I live on the main highway with no shoulders or breakdown lanes. And the closest side street is almost as dangerous. It’s a cut-off that’s most often used as a race track for people in a big rush.
With lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and a bunch of other chronic diseases, there aren’t a whole lot of choices for me when it comes to exercise. I can’t run, can’t ride a bicycle, I have no athletic abilities at all. Whatever I do needs to be easy on my joints. So that leaves walking and SWIMMING!
We recently attended a birthday party for the youngest grandchild at the local community center/aquatics park. I’ve been there before but mainly just in the meeting rooms. This time, I walked around and checked out the whole place.
Besides the meeting rooms and the outdoor pool that I had already seen, I found an indoor walking track, a regulation size indoor pool, and a therapy pool. The therapy pool is 98° with circulating water like a giant hot tub. They also offer water aerobics and yoga classes.
Swimming and water aerobics are easy on the joints so I don’t really have an excuse not to try it. It's not far from my home so I could go whenever I wanted. Its indoors so its available no matter which season or what the weather is like.
I probably won’t be swimming laps anytime soon. But I think I have finally found something that I want to do and that I’m able to do. It's pretty rare when those 2 things come together.
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