Julie Helen: The decade I plan to be stronger than ever before 

“Mom, eat,” exclaimed my little boy a few mornings ago. He made sure he caught my eye while he said it. He sounded so sure as he picked up a spoon of porridge to put it into his own mouth. I was passing the doorway, about to grab his school uniform and all the bits and bobs to keep our morning rolling.

Ricky is a wonderful morning person. Once he can have a few cosy minutes in bed after he wakes up, he becomes a bouncy, energetic, chatterbox.

I’m different. Pain courses through my body first thing in the morning. I’m like a creaky old car that needs to be wound up to get going. There’s a throb that I don’t feel at any other time. I remember being so annoyed at that throb that went through me as a teenager, I felt like it was a layer of irritation that made getting to school even harder. 

Now, I understand the throbbing feeling as something that is just there and then it will pass and I can get on with my day. Sometimes it passes quickly and other times it lingers a little longer. I find it really hard to eat when there is that throbbing feeling coursing through me.

A few mornings before Ricky had told me to eat, with a beautiful authority that only a five year old can have, I had explained to him that I don’t enjoy eating breakfast and that I need to get better at it because food gives me energy and maybe it would help me to feel stronger.

Ricky understands that I’m doing more exercise this September, that I do physio when he’s at school once a week, and that an injury in my knee has gotten much better, but I really want to get stronger and be able to walk more.

He understands that my efforts are about function. He knows that I can do all the things I need to but that it doesn’t always feel easy.

Ricky loves his breakfast. In fact, it’s probably keeping him alive as he can often be a very fussy eater, but I feel that once he has had that one bit of decent sustenance, that he’ll be grand.

I decided to harness his love of breakfast to help me have some too and get into the habit of having breakfast with him rather than racing around doing all the jobs while he’s having his favourite meal. It seems simple but I’m hoping all the small changes will accumulate.

Ricky is like me, diligent and like a dog with a bone when he has a task in his grasp. Every morning he tells me to eat and I can see how proud he is to have that little role.

I know all the things I should be doing to look after myself.

At a recent appointment about a new wheelchair, I was put in a sling hoist that moved me from a bed to a strange contraption that would then be used to mould the back of the new wheelchair to accommodate and somewhat correct the curvature in my spine. While I was mid-air, the specialist told me he could see my weight if I wanted to know the number. I was weighed successfully in 2015 and never since then. I can’t stand comfortably on an ordinary scales.

I know in that decade I’ve been at my smallest, my strongest, I’ve been pregnant and I’ve been at my biggest, so I learned the current number as a yardstick for the decade to come, the decade I eat breakfast and get stronger than ever before.