Joey Payeur
There are days that feel like entire months in Nicole LePine’s long journey back to being her old self again.
The anguish mounts as her progress stagnates.
LePine’s mind enters a questioning mode–wondering if the fight to regain the physical freedoms she no longer takes for granted is worth all this.
It makes her inquire internally whether there ever will be an end to the seemingly endless series of painful physiotherapy sessions that became a part of her life after suffering a stroke on June 1 last year.
They are sessions that would test the will of any person; never mind that of a once energetic and exuberant 19-year-old.
The former Muskie badminton player now tires from the simple act of travelling in a vehicle back and forth from her temporary home with her cousins in Thunder Bay, where she walks the path of physical healing, to her actual home in Fort Frances for some much-needed emotional lifting each weekend.
On those days of despair, in those moments of turmoil, LePine always remembers her reasons to keep going.
Reasons like her family.
“What keeps me on track is that I want to make my family proud and I look how far I’ve already come,” noted LePine,
Reasons like her dearly-departed cousin, Abbey Sauve, who is featured with LePine in the most recent profile pic on her Facebook page with LePine’s caption reading simply: “My hero.”
Its posting date? Just 10 days before LePine experienced her stroke and inadvertently began to author her own heroic story.
“I think of my motivation of my little cousin, who passed away of cancer, and I wear a necklace and a bracelet in her honour and I think of how she would want me to keep pushing,” LePine said.
Reasons like loyal pal Lexi Kruger.
“I think of how hard this must be on my best friend [Kruger], so she really pushes me,” LePine said.
All those incentives have led to LePine exceeding the expectations of those charged with her medical care.
“I’m feeling happy to see my progress and everything I can do,” she enthused.
“My right side is almost fully functional and I have some movement in my left.
“Six months ago, I couldn’t do much and now I can do everything better, like doing the stairs,” she noted.
“I have surpassed what all the doctors said and I keep doing more.”
The stroke robbed LePine of her ability to speak, but she slowly and most surely is taking back what was hers.
“My speech is getting better,” she remarked. “I work hard on it.
“You can understand me more, but I’ve got used to not talking so it’s hard to overcome that habit,” she conceded.
“But I find I get more distracted than before.”
LePine was adamant her ability to understand and process information has not changed from since before the stroke–something she wanted to make clear Saturday via Twitter.
“What people don’t understand is that I can process information just fine and I CAN HEAR YOU; you don’t need to speak loud like I’m dumb,” she tweeted.
LePine’s mood is about to change for the much better, though, in very short order.
“I’m actually moving home in two weeks,” she said.
“I think being at home for the summer, and actually being able to enjoy it, will really bring my spirits up, especially [with the fact] my family will be back together, which makes me feel at peace.”
The road to being able to speak clearly again, run again, dance again, and just move from room to room without limitations still remains one heading towards what appears to be a distant horizon.
But LePine willingly confronts the journey not with fearful pessimism, but with a hope that burns within her and refuses to let her believe in any other outcome than the best one imaginable.
“I’m very confident that I will get better either in two years or 10 years,” she stressed.
“I have so much support and it really helps me get better.
“I hope one day I can do almost everything I used to do,” LePine added.
“My goal is to one day walk and I push to succeed that goal.”
