Meet You In a Dark Alley!

Something remarkable happened today. A year's worth of hard work at the gym paid off in an amazing way. My body is a medical wonderland, challenged by overlapping and conflicting genetic, hereditary and acquired conditions. Unless blood, muscle and/or bone conspire against me, I am an active person. I walk, swim, do Pilates, and now, work out with a trainer.

All of these peculiarities aside, I am someone who believes myself to be a well person with physical challenges. After all, everybody has something. Some cross to bear. It's ungrateful and ungraceful to complain. Get yourself some friends and family, even if you have to design them from scratch, make your body strong, find ways to laugh each day, especially at yourself, eat and sleep well, and you are on your way to celebrating your 100th birthday.

Morgan, The Tyrannical Trainer, is a lovely woman with an encouraging smile, skilled at working with odd bodies. She's tough, though, and pushes me, safely, in ways that have made me increasingly strong and agile. She easily adapts to the asymmetries in my body. She watches for signs that my nutrition may be less than adequate, observing the ways that it is revealed by changes in my skin and hair. She has remedies for my bruises. Exercises are adjusted if, affected by my genetic disorder, some of my muscles do not fire as expected or my joints are lax. When all four of my menisci tore at the same time last year, exercises were designed around them; she began training me in the pool one day a week. Now I can do squats.

And I am capable of two feats I would not have quite imagined possible with my skinny, if toned, arms. I can do push-ups! One male, 35 female, and 10 - shown here - that use my body weight as balance against a set of pulleys.

So here I am. Remarkable! Counting on 100 (because 99 1/2 just won't do!).

Don't mess with me!