Toughest on Earth

It’s been a couple months over a year now and Rachel’s lungs are doing great. She had a staph infection about a month ago and had to go on IV’s for a few weeks, but she’s bounced right back and her PFT numbers have come back up again. We are currently in the process of remedying another malady though: muscular damage.

For over 4 years leading up to the transplant, Rachel was on high doses of steroids to keep the inflammation down in her lungs. These steroids masked many other symptoms and also caused her body to not heal damaged tissue. Now she’s taking 1/12 of the dose of steroids she was on before, so injuries that could have happened months or even years ago are starting to show up. Last August, Rachel began experiencing pain in her hips, especially when seated. It’s gotten progressively worse and a few months ago she had an MRI to see what was going on. The scan showed that she has a torn labrum (cartilage) in her left hip, a bulging disk in her lower back, a swollen quadratus femoris (an external rotator in the hip) in her right hip, and a partial thickness tear of greater than 50% in her right leg. Being the tough girl that she is though, it took a while for her to get fed up with the muscles that weren’t healing with rest and go see an orthopedist to see what we could do to fix it.

Enter Dr. No. We’ll call him Dr. No because I believe his full name is Dr. Nowayamianactualdoctor. I won’t go into detail, but when I have to explain an MRI reading to a doctor who “can’t tell what he’s looking at” and is skeptical of my wife (you know, the girl who went through the largest thoracic surgery one can undergo) when she says she’s in a lot of pain…that’s not going to work for us. Rachel booked a meeting with a different doctor that we’ve heard a lot of good stuff about and hopefully we can get a physical therapy plan together to work on healing the torn muscles, and calming down the swollen ones. When it hurts to much to walk outside and enjoy your new lungs, it’s more than a little frustrating…

I’m writing this because I know Rachel probably won’t. She doesn’t like to complain and doesn’t want people to think she’s constantly whining even though she’s constantly in some form of discomfort. Rachel is tough beyond what anyone I know considers tough. The other night we were watching a video of Annie Thorsdottir, the winner of the 2011 Crossfit Games which earned her the title of the Fittest Woman on Earth. Picture a young Icelandic woman’s head on the body of male gymnast on steroids (different kind than Rachel’s) and that’s Annie. Better yet, Google her name for yourself and watch her throw heavy weights around, walk on her hands, push 200lb sleds across concrete, and outsprint groups of male athletes (many of which are smaller than her). Anyway, after finishing one of the videos that night, Rachel sat back and calmly said “I’m tougher than her.” There was no argument there. It wasn’t a statement of pride, it was just a statement of the fact that my wife has gone through a life that requires a kind of mental tenacity that not many other people posses. Being that tough is more than just surviving difficulties, it’s striving despite them. Rachel’s positive attitude throughout her challenges is a testament to her personal resilience and steadfast faith in God to give her the strength she needs.

Annie Thorsdottir might have earned the Fittest on Earth, but Rachel Slick got Toughest on Earth.