Rise Above, In Pieces
Maybe pushing forward doesn’t always look like pushing harder.
On four hours of sleep and a body that refused to cooperate, I learned to stop measuring progress by how much I could force myself to finish. I walked 1.3 miles, cleaned the room in pieces, chased medical answers, and kept moving forward however I could. This is about redefining “Rise Above” when slower doesn’t mean stopped.
I woke up on four hours and forty-four minutes of sleep with eleven hours of sleep debt.
So naturally, I had things to do.
I took my new pain medication along with other medications I require.
Rob took Kaylee to school.
I could have driven under normal circumstances, but these were new medications, and I didn’t know yet what they were going to do to me.
So I didn’t.
That sounds small. It probably should be small. But lately so much of my life seems to involve deciding whether the thing I technically can do is also the thing I should do.
I laid on the couch for about twenty minutes.
Then I pushed myself forward.
The medication had not recreated the strange little miracle from the night before, when I had stood upright and walked around my house almost giddy because my muscles had temporarily released their grip on me.
The pain was still there.
Maybe a 9.5 instead of a 10.
At this point, apparently we celebrate decimals.
THE HOUSE
I looked around my bedroom and hated what I saw.
Not because my house was objectively some disaster zone. By plenty of people’s standards, it probably wasn’t messy at all.
By mine, it was.
Clutter.
Things out of place.
Laundry waiting.
Little signs everywhere that my life wasn’t functioning the way I expect it to.
I hate that.
So I made the bed.
Straightened the bedside tables.
Put the laundry on the bed to deal with later.
Then I put on my waist trainer and my shoes and went outside.
I walked 1.3 miles.
Slowly.
And for once, I didn’t turn the shorter distance into an accusation against myself.
It was enough.
I knew if I pushed too hard in the morning, I might spend the rest of the day miserable.
So I stopped.
I showered.
Then I laid back down.
My stomach felt a little queasy. Not nauseous. Just off.
I gave myself fifteen minutes.
Then I would try again.
Apparently this was how the day was going to work.
Do something.
Stop.
Do something else.
Stop.
THE PAPER TRAIL
Somewhere in between trying to reclaim my bedroom and reclaim my body, I downloaded the Lee Health app.
My MRIs had hit an insurance problem. At first, it looked like the whole thing had been denied and cancelled.
So I messaged the nurse asking for help and scheduled physical therapy for September 9 at 7 a.m.
Later I learned two of the MRIs—the cervical spine and right shoulder—had actually been approved. The thoracic spine was the one insurance denied.
Better than nothing.
While I was inside the app, I started looking around.
And found the past.
There was an urgent-care note from April.
Then another record.
And another.
December 2024.
September 2024.
May 2025.
January 2023.
Right shoulder.
Right scapula.
Right ribs.
Right neck.
Right arm.
Pain severe enough to send me to urgent care. Pain severe enough to send me to the ER when urgent care didn’t work. Imaging. Medications. Referrals. Notes about decreased range of motion. Notes about tenderness. Notes about the levator scapulae. Notes about crepitus around the shoulder blade.
Years of me trying to explain versions of the same territory that was screaming at me now.
The earliest Lee Health record I found was January 2023.
But I know where I trace the beginning.
October 2022.
After Hurricane Ian, I was helping pull a Jet Ski into a dry dock. I had already said I couldn’t do it. The rope slipped from my ex’s hands, and before I could let go, the force of that Jet Ski yanked through my right side.
That is the moment I remember as the turning point.
I was born with hEDS. I had lived with it long before that day. I had strange pain flares and injuries and things that made much more sense once I was diagnosed at 32.
But that injury was different for me.
I pushed on afterward.
I kept working.
I went to doctors.
I tried to figure out what was wrong.
And eventually the medical record starts leaving breadcrumbs behind me.
I cannot prove that every pain episode since then has one cause. The records cannot prove that either.
But looking at years of notes documenting pain in overlapping parts of my right side did something to me.
It reminded me that I have been trying for a very long time.
This didn’t start because I finally got tired of being uncomfortable a few weeks ago.
I have been knocking on doors.
THE CLOTHES WERE STILL THERE
Unfortunately, historical vindication does not fold laundry.
The clothes were still sitting on my bed.
And by then, my body was making every step difficult.
I changed into workout clothes because they were more comfortable.
Then I sat down.
I put on posture straps.
Then I sat down.
I already had on a posture-support bra.
Apparently I had reached the stage of life where getting dressed required aftermarket structural components.
I own straps for everything.
Heating pads too.
Regular heating pads. Wraps. One that goes around my neck and shoulders. If someone has invented a device promising to hold, heat, compress, support, stabilize, or otherwise negotiate with an angry musculoskeletal system, there is a reasonable chance I have tried some version of it.
Still, the clothes were there.
My mind wanted them gone.
My body wanted absolutely no part of this meeting.
So I did some.
Stopped.
Did more.
Stopped again.
Eventually the clothes were put away.
The bedroom was about 98 percent better.
And I was proud of it.
That sentence would have sounded ridiculous to an earlier version of me.
I used to run businesses.
Now I was proud because I put away laundry.
But context changes the size of an accomplishment.
That day, it was hard.
So yes.
I was proud.
THE BRACELET
I kept looking down at my wrist.
DREAM.
RISE ABOVE.
Rise Above is part of REELFISH because I believe in it.
But I think sometimes we misunderstand what those words are supposed to require from us.
Rising above does not always mean overpowering something.
It doesn’t mean pretending it doesn’t hurt.
It doesn’t mean walking three miles because 1.3 feels unimpressive.
It doesn’t mean finishing everything without sitting down because needing to stop somehow makes the accomplishment less legitimate.
Sometimes it means accepting the body you have that day without surrendering the life you still want.
I wanted the room clean.
So I cleaned it in pieces.
I wanted to move.
So I walked 1.3 miles instead of pushing until I hated the rest of the day.
I wanted answers.
So when insurance got in the way, I messaged the nurse, scheduled PT, opened the app, and started digging.
I wanted my life moving forward.
So I moved it forward however I could.
Not gracefully.
Not efficiently.
And definitely not at the speed my mind wanted.
But forward.
Maybe that is the version of Rise Above I need right now.
Not defeating my body.
Not proving I can still do everything I used to do.
Not turning every day into a test of how much pain I can tolerate before I collapse.
Just refusing to confuse slower with stopped.
The room was 98 percent better.
The walk was 1.3 miles.
Two MRIs were approved instead of three.
The answers were incomplete.
So was I.
And maybe, for that day, none of it needed to be 100 percent to count.
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