Beginning of a Journey

The beginning of my FND journey didn’t come with a loud announcement. It was not one of those ¨Prince Ali, fabulous he¨ moments. The arrival was soft and gradual. 

First I noticed a curious inward sway of my left foot where a normal swing-through used to be when walking. As time went on, a progressive preference for certain footwear and walking surfaces emerged. And while, through all this time I could continue a modified exercise regime and working, I noticed how I had become increasingly reluctant to enter certain environments.

I avoided shopping centres because tarred surfaces brought out the worst of the walking disturbance and that is unfortunately the surface most common in all public spaces in these parts. I live in a part of the world known as the Cape Winelands, and I had always  loved visiting the myriad wine estates surrounding me and spending time walking in their beautiful surroundings. I lost the inclination to do that too. 

Walking became more a step-by-step conscious effort and less automatic by the day. Although the onset of FND was gradual, the realisation of its impact on my world wasn’t. It was a sudden awareness that my world had become significantly smaller and suddenly, only one pair of shoes would do.

My initial approach, before I learned about FND, was to correct what went awry. I was quite determined, and as little liking as I had for repetitive-type exercises previously, I became quite dogged in my determination to ¨fix¨ this. I approached it with the usual physiotherapy paradigm of analysing and planning the corrective route. 

That turned out to make it worse. 

With FND, I began to discover that, reducing my conscious effort and allowing my mind to focus elsewhere could help coax out the automatic movement that was still there. Being overly-focused seemed to push the automatic movements further into hiding, so to speak. 

Days started to blur together and my walking evolved from day to day. I have since been learning  to drop the excessive attention on my walking pattern and, with lots of practice, I am starting to master this skill. It is especially challenging as it goes against the grain of my physiotherapy training which has by now become second nature. 

But I have found that, in support of what is described in the current literature on FND, getting my mind out of my own way delivers the best results for me. It makes walking feel more effortless, albeit imperfect in places and produces less tension in the muscles around my hip and knee. 

Currently, I am in a good space mentally. I have fully accepted this is what it is. I have developed a light curiosity about how each step unfolds without attachment to outcomes or preconceived ideas of what that step ¨should¨ look like. 

In the mix are, of course, the days when I feel exhausted by the current limitations and the secondary left knee pain that has developed as a result of the altered walking pattern over almost a year now. I am learning to hold space for both: the days when the hope flies high and the days when all seems a little pointless. 

In this integration of the polarities, above all, I hold this message front and centre: 

This is a reversible condition. 

And need I add that I have a powerful miniature black panther to keep me company who couldn’t care two hoots about the perfection of my gait pattern?

Dennis, the black panther and his indifference to neurological rehabilitation