Second place 3: Toby W

My name is Toby and I’m 55 years old. I live in Upstate New York and work one of those dreaded “desk jobs” that Krista tells us will kill us all eventually. I have three kids, none of whom is home presently. I live out in the country and used to raise sheep and goats. I basically started getting in to weight lifting and then bike riding several years ago because I’ve got a whole lot of genetic baggage that I have to keep ahead of. Krista and I are joined at the hip with our Ukranian ancestors (and the thighs and the waistlines and the potatoes and cabbage and onions…)

Assbustingness - how have you busted your ass to get to where you are now?

When you live in the country and raise livestock, all activities count as “assbusting” – cleaning the barn after the thaw(don’t ask), hand shoveling 8 inches of snow when it’s 10 degrees outside, hauling five gallon buckets of water up the hill to the barn. That’s weightlifting as a lifestyle.

Getting up and doing, no matter what – I just had a hysterectomy. I was back at work in a week. I’m now in training for a bike ride in Maryland in April. Twelve years ago, I did some damage to a nerve in my back and had to re-teach myself to walk properly and stand up straight. Anyone who’s had back injuries knows how much this can hurt – I signed up for ballroom dancing lessons (yes, they do work and I ended up knowing where all the parts of my numb foot were) and trained at that for probably six months.

Accomplishments - what are they?

See above with regard to coming back from a back injury. My right calf is still a little bit smaller than my left, but I’m pretty good.

Survived physically caring for my elderly demented mother for a year. That included not only the usual “care” issues, but also, with her blood pressure problems, being able to physically lift her straight up off the floor whenever she would faint and have a seizure.

Commuting to work on my bike – I admit that I’m using the greenway and the bike path through a local park for a total of 7.5 miles each way, but I do it in 35 minutes.

Reducing my blood pressure to 120/80 and cholesterol below 200.

Does having 22” thighs and 15” biceps count?

Adversity - how have you dealt with it?

The way to survive adversity is to find some activity which you feel gives you some control over an important aspect of your life. When I was caring for my mom, the only thing that gave me that feeling was working on the treadmill and lifting weights(I had to do it facing the door of her bedroom to make sure she did not make a break for it through the front door). When she really started to go downhill and have seizures and fainting, that body strength was the only thing that stood between being able to care for her at home and having the call the emergency squad on a daily basis.

I probably have had more surgery done on me than most people. I’ve had surgery on the inner ear bones for deafness, one of my hands for carpel tunnel, had my gall bladder, appendix and uterus removed. I’ve got a wicked compressed nerve in my lower back that flares up from time to time and makes the top of my right foot feel like someone has a blow torch on it and the outside of my leg totally numb. When that happens, I have to be really careful how I walk . All of my rehabilitation for myself has consisted of some form of exercise, whether it is ballroom dancing for the foot and the leg, taking violin lessons for the hand or whatever. Nothing ever gets “better” by just sitting there.

Actions - what can and do you do?

I bike, lift weights, walk, dance, garden, and work on my house.

Activity - how do you stay committed to it (or how have you re-committed to it)?

All I have to do is think about my mom and her 6 brothers and sisters – every single one of them died of heart disease and both my mom and one of her sisters ended their lives with multiple-infarct dementia. One of her brothers had his first heart attack at 45. The other person I think about is my father, who ended up on dialysis for the last two years of his life because he threw a clot into one of his renal arteries (that’s when they found out his other kidney was shot). He hated every single day of the last two years of his life. I do not intend to end up like that.

Awesomeness - why are you awesome? Toot your horn!

I am awesome because I have a sense of humor about myself and my problems. That tends to keep the “I can’t do this” at arms’ length a lot of the time. I don’t worry about what anyone is going to think about how saggy my stomach is from three kids, a gall bladder and a hysterectomy. I’m 55 – I’m not 25. I’m not sure I really cared about that at 25 either. I’m just glad that I’m strong enough and healthy enough to be doing what I’m doing with the issues I’ve got at my age. That also keeps depression at bay, too – I think a lot of people are depressed because they feel helpless in the face of physical stuff or perceived physical stuff.

I also learned a lesson when I lost most of my hearing after having my kids: Information is the lever that you use against feeling helpless. Lack of information makes people frightened and feel helpless. Information helps people to understand what their options ARE and what they can do to help themselves or at least feel reasonably ok with what their situation is. Gives people a sense of control and helps to hold down “delusional thinking”.

I also think I’ve done a pretty reasonable job in my family of beating back the whole “cultural thinking says you should look a certain way” with my kids. I grew up in a family where I was 5’2” and my sister and my mom were both over 5’10” (in her more malicious moments, my sister tried to convince me that I had been adopted) and in general the message coming down to me was that I was a troll. I knew going into the motherhood thing that the chances of my kids being short like I am were pretty strong – but I also do not believe in pushing delusional thinking on my kids: when they are surrounded by negative influences all day long in the media and at school, I knew that I had very little hope of waving a few pom-poms at home and making noises that “I think you are beautiful” and having it stick.

My husband and I felt that our job as parents was to make the kids strong in the mind and the body, do as much as we could to help them feel loved for who and what they are at home and hope that would help them weather the storm outside. Part of our luck was that through a quirk of geography, we could not get TV and were too busy to get cable, so the kids were not influenced at home by that – what they got to do was read , watch old movies and work with livestock out in the barn. In general, I think that part of things worked reasonably well and the kids got through high school with a few bumps and bruises but I think with their self-esteem pretty well intact. They also grew up working along with us out in the barn, so they are pretty strong on the physical side too and understand the benefits of being able to wield a shovel and lift 50 pound bales of hay without aftereffects.

I think the whole point is not to be afraid.