Stories from the OI Community: Peter's Journey's

Posted on October 01, 2006 at 08:25 AM

Peter submitted this story to blogathon and it tells about his journey's and fight with and final acceptance of his OI. Here are his words:

I have OI type 1, that is the mildest form of OI and I was the first person in my family to have it! My family had been screwed up for years, but my having OI sent them really over the edge. Or, at least, I was the excuse.

It took me a long time to accept that I had OI. I've always been a good swimmer, so I swam that famous river in Egypt "De Nial" for years. While I made things worse for my body, I did have a lot of adventures that I'm glad I had. If I'd behaved in a "responsible" manner, my body might be in better shape today, but I wouldn't have traveled by myself to Mexico and Central America, learned to run heavy equipment like bulldozers and front-end loaders, repair cars, fall trees, do
construction work, even lay out and build a road. I learned to trap fur-bearing animals, too.

Pretty odd-ball stuff, yes.

While some of it wasn't adaptive to living in the urban world, I gained a great deal of confidence and competence. Even now, twenty years after I had to stop living like that, out in the boonies, I look back on it with wonder and have some happy memories. There are painful memories, too, where I got too far into self-medication (and went into a downward tailspin that almost ended in self-destruction). But, that was what it took; like the saying goes, it takes what it takes. We all do the best we can, I believe, at the time.

It's easy to forget physical pain when the memories are otherwise good. That is, until the pain comes back. It does. Even so, the memories stay good, most of the time. I wouldn't give them up for anything.

Thank your for your story Peter. You can read more about Peter on his blog at disturbingthecomfortable.blogspot.com. He is also a writer for Audacity Magazine.

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