Coping with PC

Every single person has problems and challenges in their life.  Almost daily I work with or talk with people who have problems that I think are worse than mine. These experiences have made me somewhat thoughtful about my own package of problems. People who know me think having sore feet must be terrible and they are grateful they don’t have PC.

However, I find that I’m quite comfortable in dealing with PC. I’m not saying I like walking with pain. It’s just that I know how to manage this particular problem. I know I can live happily in spite of PC.  It hasn’t always been this way. But especially now, when I so often see challenges other people deal with, whether they be physical, mental, or emotional problems, I’ve decided I’ll take my own problems, thank you very much.

I think about my sons, Sam and Nate. They have gone through times in their lives where it’s been very discouraging for them to have PC. Sam, who is 14, is currently dealing with three infected toenails. Yellow pus is weeping from the nails and the toes are bright red. It’s not fun for him to walk right now because of those toes – let alone the pain caused by his regular calluses and blisters. (And yes, he is now starting on an antibiotic because the infections are not healing up on by themselves.)

Sam would love to not to be dealing with those infected toenails. But he’s still coping just fine. He’ll certainly have more trials with his feet, but he’s kind of settling into his life with PC. He knows what he has, why he has it and he’s learning how to handle it. I find these kids with PC to be so courageous.

Nate, who just turned 13, went through a time where he was discouraged about the fact that he is often sidelined from sports by the pain in his feet. Yet on Thanksgiving morning, he played in the “turkey bowl” in our neighborhood.  For Nate that football game was worth wasting his feet.  But I also notice that Nate does a series of exercises at home regularly including push-ups, sit-ups and a ridiculous amount of pull-ups. He’s got the most defined biceps I’ve ever seen on a kid that young and his six-pack is unbelievable.

What I’m saying is even though Nate was sad to give up soccer and other sports because being physically fit is very important to him (and because he enjoyed the sports) he has found his own way to compensate.

Nate still has many friends that play sports. But this year, on his own, he joined the Academic Games team (with Sam) and he also is on the Science Lab team – a group that learns lab experiments and then travels to elementary schools to teach younger children and to get them excited about science. Nate is finding his own niche as is Sam.

My whole point is we all have problems. And while I don’t want to diminish in anyway the struggles we have with PC, we do learn to cope.  Like my boys, there will be more hard times with PC, but we all kind of “settle in.”  We learn to proactively deal with our lives. We make necessary adjustments. And in the end, sometimes we find we’d rather be dealing with PC than a whole lot of other problems we see others dealing with.  And we’re okay.