A year ago, I could run marathons.
I could walk up and down stairs. I could train hard, push myself, and do things that would have sounded impossible when I was sitting in a wheelchair six years earlier.
But there was still one thing I could not do safely.
I could not walk up the stairs without holding onto the railing.
That sounds small until you understand the rest of the story. For almost two years, getting out of the wheelchair was the goal. Not running. Not marathons. Not some huge inspirational comeback scene with music playing in the background. Just getting out of the chair.
So when I noticed I could walk up the stairs without grabbing the railing, I laughed. I smiled. I was surprised.
I did not make a big ceremony out of it, because after a while recovery starts to look like that. Tiny moments. Quiet proof. Things you could not do before that suddenly become normal.
But it mattered.
It was another reminder that recovery can still happen years later.
The Big Wins Are Not the Only Wins
The wheelchair did not disappear in one dramatic moment.
It was a slow progression over a couple of years. Walker. Cane. Holding onto anything and everything. An orthotic that helped with foot drop and ankle stability while I learned to walk better again. There were tools, supports, compensations, and a lot of awkward in-between stages that nobody puts on a motivational poster.
By late 2021 or early 2022, I was done with the wheelchair in public. Stores, errands, everywhere. That was the big threshold.
Then toward the end of 2022, I got rid of the orthotic too.
That is when running started.
There was no plan. I noticed I was leaning forward a lot when I walked, and I kind of Forrest Gumped it. Around the block became a mile. Then two. Then five. Then treadmill runs and neighborhood runs and way more miles than probably made sense at first.
I was not fast.
I am still not fast.
At some points, it was slightly faster than speed walking. But it helped. I enjoyed it. That was the surprising part. I was a bigger athlete growing up, and running for pleasure was never exactly my thing.
Then somehow, during recovery, it became a thing.
The Work Stacked
Running was not magic.
Nothing was.
Breath work helped. Meditation helped. The gym helped. Losing weight helped. Better energy helped. Better mobility helped. My schedule at that point in life allowed me to focus on training. My wife and kids were supportive.
It all started coming together in the summer of 2022, but not in a clean way. It was not one habit, one therapy, one breakthrough, or one perfect answer. It was a stack of little things that started working together.
Then the gains kept stacking through 2022, 2023, 2024, and now beyond.
That part matters because people want recovery to be clean. They want a straight line. They want to know exactly which thing worked so they can point at it and say, that was the answer.
My experience has been messier than that.
It has been physical, mental, emotional, frustrating, and sometimes boring. A lot of the progress now is more micro than massive. But it is still progress.
Tired Can Mean Something Different
At one point, I was running so much that I started dealing with normal overtraining stuff.
Foot injuries. Overuse on the stronger side of my body. Broken toenails. Some fatigue.
That does not sound great, but there was a weirdly positive part of it too. I was tired from doing physical work. I was not tired from brain fog. I was not tired because stroke recovery or MS had wiped me out. I was tired because I was running a crap ton.
That kind of tired felt earned.
It never scared me.
It also taught me that progress is not free. I still relied more on the side of my body that had not been paralyzed by the stroke, especially early on. That created consequences. Over time, that has continued to improve too.
Even my gait improved.
Was it repetition? Strength? Balance? Confidence? Rhythm? Probably all of it. I am not here to turn my story into a biomechanics lesson. I just know it helped.
Being Young Did Not Make It Easy
My stroke happened at 37.
People would say things like, "You'll be good, you're young."
I know they meant well. But it was not very helpful.
Stroke does not care about age, and recovery does not either. At least not in the clean, comforting way people want it to.
Being 37 did not make the fear less real. If anything, it made part of it harder. I had two young kids under five, a high schooler, and a wife who is deaf. I was supposed to be in my prime. Instead, I was trying to figure out how my family was going to function if I could not get enough of myself back.
There were a lot of unknowns.
Part of me hoped my body would just snap out of it. That was not realistic, but I still hoped it. The whole thing felt surreal.
Eventually, I had to stop waiting around for the magic version of recovery.
There is no magic pill.
Nobody is going to do the work for you.
Start Small and Stack Wins
I compared myself to other people, even though everyone told me not to.
Of course I did. I am human. I was frustrated.
But recovery has too many hidden variables for comparison to make sense. You do not know how someone else's brain was affected. You do not know how their body was affected. You do not know their support system, fatigue, mobility, pain, fear, or what they are fighting through that you cannot see.
So the best advice I can give from my own experience is simple:
- Start small.
- Work it till it works.
- Keep pushing forward.
- Stack wins.
That does not mean pretending everything is fine. It does not mean ignoring your doctors, your therapists, your limits, or your body. It means understanding that recovery can keep showing up long after the obvious milestones.
Sometimes it looks like getting out of a wheelchair.
Sometimes it looks like running farther than you thought you could.
Sometimes it looks like walking up the stairs without touching the railing and realizing, years later, that your body is still learning.
That is not small.
That is getting back to life.
