I think I want to say that I don't think you need to constantly push yourself to do something every minute. Sometimes you need to sit there and appreciate what you just accomplished. You should also share your experiences with others who might benefit from what you have done.
Do not let your health hold you back. Okay, if you break your leg or blow out your knee, you can put off climbing Kilimanjaro until it is healed.
I had always wanted to spend a semester or school year in Europe studying during college. Even though I was treated for thyroid cancer in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I still went to France for my spring semester of my junior year. I brought several bottles of my thyroid replacement medication and information on how and who to contact at the American College in Paris in case I needed medical care and set off. You have to remember this was before fax machines, cell phones, and the internet so the only way to contact the US from Europe was by slow air mail or very expensive international calls. My health wasn't going to stop me.
Since then I have traveled far and wide. I have been to Europe and Japan. I have been to events all over. I have climbed mountains. I have skied. I have done lots of things. I had a lot of fun (getting my body into the shape it is now).
Every so often I run into someone who is out there living life as full as they can. Claire Wineland is one of those people. I would love to meet her someday but for now I will continue to read about her and follow her. This article starts off with:
"As a small child, she played hide-and-seek with nurses, ripped out IVs to race around the hospital floor naked and left an explosion of glitter in her wake.
As a teen, she got boys to carry her uphill when she was tired, taught her best friend how to flirt and watched her doctor squirm as he gave her the safe-sex talk.
And as an adult, Claire Wineland has continued living out loud, even as her body fails her.
Claire, 20, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic and terminal progressive disease that's landed her in the hospital for a quarter of her life. Ask what's on her bucket list, and she'll say she doesn't have one.
Fixating on a checklist of goals before she goes "sounds exhausting," she says, especially "when you've been dying your whole life." Instead, she'd rather focus on doing all she can in each moment."
She also has written a book (but not one about a happy sick person), heads a foundation, and makes videos among other things. One of the videos I do like is 'Dying 101':
Get moving and fulfill your dreams!
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