Thanksgiving Tribute -Veronica's Road to Recovery

Hey there, it's Veronica Aguirre here with some thoughts for your Thanksgiving season.

If you're not able to read the full story I'm about to tell, there is a 2-minute video version:

If you have facebook, please LIKE it! Your LIKE vote will count in a video contest that I'm in for my doctor's treatment network. Thanks ahead for your support! But it could also be well worth the time to read the full background story:

So I'll be honest. Sometimes it's really hard to be thankful. We can get caught up in the things we have to do, the hectic happenings around us, the people we interact with, and the routines we cruise through on autopilot. Maybe we're just tired, lonely, bored, antsy, or craving relief from the unrelenting pains that crush our spirits. What's there to do? What's else is out there? What's the next thing? Why me? Sometimes life is just hard.

No, I won't leave you with those thoughts. I've been through a fair share of difficult times asking the same questions and wondering the same things. I see now that I've come a long way from where I was before, and yet I look forward to what lies ahead with hope. Yes, the Veronica you're hearing from now is thankful for what she's been through and she smiles at the future :)

The years of my twenties have not exactly been all that easy. Six years ago on a fateful winter day in the year 2006, I had a serious snowboarding accident when I fell backwards down a ski slope. I had no helmet and the impact of falling on the back of my head caused a minor concussion that, unbeknownst to me at the time, was just the start of a long series of physical ordeals to come. In that moment, I remember blacking out, seeing stars in my eyes when I regained consciousness (those cartoon characters with stars swirling around their heads after a *bonk* are true!), and then came intense headaches and convulsive vomiting all the way to the emergency room. I am so thankful for those friends who left their own fun on the slopes to care for me in that dire time. In tough love, they did not give in to my pleas to pass out from the pain. "Stay awake, Vero!" It was the most intense and desperate experience of my life. The emergency doctors found that thankfully I had no internal bleeding or broken bones. I thought my vision had gone fuzzy but was relieved to realize that my soft contacts had popped out of my eyes when I fell. Praise the Lord that my MRI was clear. In the aftermath, I felt like a vegetable and had bad headaches for a while.

A year rolled around after that accident, and in the fall of 2007, I had some other injuries. I got a foot sprain that required me to recover on crutches. Then I lost my ability to use those crutches when I sprained my wrist from climbing around the house and on furniture for, you know, important things like my daily cereal and milk. Oh, that I would have taken heed to be careful and rest still from the start. With the appendages of my right side all bound in Velcro-strapped braces, I got the question, "Wow, did you get into a fight?" Heh. I later admittedly thought, "Yeah, I really have been fighting. The battle has been with myself." My wounded physical extremities were evidence of my internal wrestlings to cease striving when all I needed to do was be still and know God as absolute Lord of my life. My additional wrist sprain also just so happened at the start of a college finals week and made it painfully difficult to take engineering exams that had to be hand-scribed. Though I was given extra time for my disability, I didn't use it all. It was also difficult to focus mentally because I had received news of a "family emergency" that I needed to immediately return home to. That family emergency was that my dear father had passed away.

My dad's death was sudden. Yet in that moment of news, when I felt like the bottom had fallen out, I testify that God was faithful and mighty to uphold me when I had no strength of my own. He also surrounded me with others to care for and comfort me. I was literally held in the arms of an Angel. That winter was sober and poignant to endure, though also a time when God's compassion was very present to my family and I. We received all our needs and, as my mom put it when she received me in a wheelchair at the airport, "Oh, Veronica, God is so good!" Huh, what did she mean? Really, the gospel of Jesus Christ is our unfailing hope. As I crept through the funeral solemnities leaning on a dear friend to walk, I thought of how the physical pain and emotional sorrow I felt was just a small taste of Christ's suffering as He carried the cross up Calvary to die separated from the love of His Father with the weight of the world's sin on this shoulders... my sin. How grateful I am for His great sacrifice that redeems me to heaven with Him when my life on earth ends. That's God's immense love for the world and deeply for each of us personally :)

That winter concluded with me falling ill with bacterial pneumonia when I attempted to return to school. I flew home in another wheelchair and withdrew from academics for the next 3-months. That time turned out to be a break that I truly needed to spend time with my family, attend doctor appointments, and, once I was out of bed-rest and breathing better, blessed to find and be received at a church that I still attend in San Francisco (hollaaa to my SFBC peeps!).

After the bout with pneumonia, my overall health was fragile and vulnerable to sickness. I had a spring season of struggling with self-pity for all the difficulties I had been going through. All I wanted was normal physical health and freedom from sickness. I didn't want to be dealing with health burdens when I wanted to enjoy the special college years of learning academics, self-discovery, and socializing with people my age. Getting through school was difficult without steady health. Yet, the Lord was good to pull me out of that low mentality by providing the opportunity to do engineering work in the slums of Brazil that following summer of 2008. It was actually a big step of faith to go contrary to logic and in uncertain circumstances. I had just recovered my ability to walk and I was to go by myself not knowing for sure who I'd stay with. However, I knew God was calling me to go, and I am so thankful that I made that decision. Everything turned out fine where God put me in the home of a wonderful Christian host family and gave me one of the best experiences for world perspective in my life. In the poorest of places in the world, I was glad to be able to walk well enough to meet some of the happiest people despite their lowly conditions and enjoy the privilege of helping others with greater needs than myself. I learned to be appreciative of how MUCH I have at home in the USA!

I spent an additional year to complete my undergraduate education, in which I also endured a series of intensive dental procedures. I would have to say that of all physical pains to have long term, the worst is a bad toothache. From everything, I felt like it was such a physical struggle to just get through my last 3 years of college to graduate. By the Lord's strength, I finally finished in June of 2009 with an BS of engineering degree! Despite the poor economy at the time, God provided me a job fitting my degree in the San Francisco Bay immediately after my graduation ceremony. It was clear that I was to return to my home city.

Well, there was definite purpose in moving home to help my mother. Yet, I eventually needed physical care from her too. At the beginning of 2009, I began to get headaches and back pains, and they continued to worsen. Then the headaches became excruciating to the point of nausea and vomiting. The back pains also made me unable to lay down comfortably to sleep. I couldn't rest. My mother lovingly cared for me and took me to many different doctors. The treatments would give only temporary relief because the curved spine pattern of my back would return later. In the stress and dealing with discomforts, my mother and I were not always patient with each other. It was also a very wearisome time of trying one treatment after another and going from one appointment to the next. My recovery took time, but also by the right treatment that we eventually found in the Lord's providence.

In the beginning of 2010, I was referred to Dr Jane of the Specific Chiropractor center. She took X-rays and found that the top two vertebrae in my brain stem area were jarred out of place and the root of all my physical problems. Though my snowboarding accident had been 3 years previous, the vertebrae of my spine had moved over time in response to the impact and the added stress over the years. My body in over-compensating had developed painful scoliosis and I was at a point of no longer being able to bear it. The beginning of treatment was intense, hard, and painful to realign the very sensitive area of the brain stem. Appointments were 3 times a week, to 2 per week, 1 per week, to every other week, supplemented with pressings to be disciplined in physical therapy exercises. My ability to perform well at work declined and the many challenges there were difficult to handle. I was eventually laid off.

I've continued my treatments to the point where I now feel healthy and thriving! Amazingly, the adjustments in the specific problem area has fixed all the other back and immune problems I suffered before. Though I'm not fully where I was before my accident and physical pains return at times, I am thankful for a sense of normalcy in my abilities and consciousness of my limitations. There's a lot I've been able to do in the past year such as travels to some faraway places and playing sports again. Those 10 months of "funemployment" was also a refreshing season for me to pursue my passions and engage in the community around me. I am now continuing to do what I love at a civil engineering and construction company in San Francisco. God has indeed provided the best in His perfect timing; I didn't even have to interview for the position. Try to figure that one out! My treatment is currently in a recovery phase of keeping up with exercises, being careful with my body, and getting check-ups once every 1 or 2 months. My progress actually rescinded a little after doing an engineering project in some rural villages in Fiji where I lived and worked in rough conditions for a month. I had fainted down some stairs over there. Though it's taken recovery time, I would never have thought of being able to do a project like that in my previous condition. I am thankful for the healing God has provided to me through my specific chiropractor and that I'm able to enjoy the things that I still sometimes take for granted, like breathing and sleeping. The little things really do count.

I'll conclude this story with a Word from the true author and perfecter of this here work in progress: 

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:3-7).

Praise God for His unfailing goodness and have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Yours truly,

Veronica Aguirre

p.s. I hope you LIKE my story, though please remember, it's not about me ;)