Equestrian Advice: This is part of our Letter to My Rookie Self series, an open letter equestrian reflection project. Learn more and/or submit your own letter here.
Dear Rookie Self,
You are five and in love with horses. Remember that first pony ride and the spark you felt inside of you?
Riding, hugging, grazing, grooming, bathing, picking, mucking… it doesn’t matter.
As long as you’re around horses, you’re happy.
Now, you are seven and competing–and everything is different. Remember that first horse show and the miserable car ride to get there? All the tears and the nerves?
Now, you are nine. Instead of heading to a horse show, you’re in the hospital, lying in a bed instead of sitting in your saddle, with electrodes on your head instead of a helmet, with a padded plastic rail at your side instead of an arena fence.
Remember when the doctor came in, flanked by a group of medical students?
“This girl has juvenile myoclonic epilepsy,” he says, as if you aren’t even in the room. “It’s a lifelong condition.”
“Excuse me, hello,” you say, and the doctor turns around slowly. “Can I still ride my horse?”
“Ride a horse?” the doctor parrots back to me as his lips seem to move in slow motion. “My dear, you may want to consider stamp collecting.”
Epilepsy affects everyone differently.
Your seizures are followed by fatigue, then debilitating headaches that last for days. The doctors request that you keep a calendar of these events, and so you do. Remember how it read?
Recovery in bed, dehydration, dizziness, nausea, seizure, headache, days of recovery in bed, dehydration, dizziness, nausea, dry-heaves, days of recovery, seizures, days of recovery stuck in bed, stuck in bed, stuck in bed, stuck in bed.
Now, once again stuck in bed, you can only dream about the barn–your happy place that smells of leather, grass, and horse manure, longing to be covered in dust, dirt, and horse hair.
You decide to fight. You fight to get back in the saddle, and it takes all the strength you have.
Sometimes you make it to a lesson once a week, some weeks more, some weeks not at all.
But when you do ride, everything’s different.
Every second with your horse matters because you don’t know when that time will come again.
Now, you are 24 and competing in the 2017
On Thursday, you text your trainer to scratch. You’re in bed with a bucket, dehydrated, and suffering the side effects of 15 daily medications.
On Friday, you’re recovering a bit, but still stuck in bed.
On Saturday, you move from the bed to the couch. It’s progress. Your stomach – for days pulled tight like a double-knotted shoelace – is finally starting to relax.
On Sunday, the last and only day left to qualify, your body is so weak that you can’t imagine sitting up tall, shoulders back, heels down.
“Do you really care?” you ask yourself. Yes, you do.
Hold on tight to what you love, and never let go of the reins. Don’t let epilepsy win.
You push through the fatigue, the nausea, the headache, and the hunger after days of not eating… and you ride.
And it feels great, even though you place last in a class of 40. It’s okay, though, because riding is no longer about winning. It’s about staying in the fight.
Riding isn’t about winning anymore.
Your team is behind you.
Sometimes it will be hard to hold on tight to riding, during those times when the side effects of your medications keep you dry heaving for days on end, when the headaches reach the point of debilitation. Or, when you haven’t been on your horse Perla for days because you’ve been in bed recovering. Your medic alert bracelet won’t stop staring you straight in the eyes, as if it has a mind all its own.
But you will hold on tight to riding because the moment you stop is the moment you allow epilepsy to win the fight and take the world you love most away from you.
Fight on #epilepsywarrior,
Channing
P.S. Enjoy this article? Trot on over to:
- 3 Tips for Horse Riding With Epilepsy (and Confidence)
- Equestrian Air Vest Review: My Favorite Fall in 30 Years
- Write Your Own Letter to Your Rookie Self
- 10 Best Stirrups for Jumping Clear (And Staying Safe)
- 32 Things You Can Do Now to Calm Your Riding Nerves Forever
- How to Jump Confidently When You Kinda Want to Throw Up
- Harriet Upton: From Junior Team GB to Riding for the Queen
