carrying dead weight

[Guest guest]

I, for one, am not " carrying dead weight " whatsover. Never have. I have

only about a 2-3 inch space of my peronneal nerve that is indented a

bit and this has been there as far as I can remember.

I am a believer in exercise, nutrition, diet and feel I am well in

control of my CMT issues. Yes, I have CMT, yes I had childhood onset,

yes I absolutely look forward to exercise for the positive health

benefits it gives me.

Dead weight? Not a chance here.

~ Gretchen

[Guest guest]

Gretchen,

I agree with all you say. At the current time I use one AFO on my left

leg with the right leg still being strong. Unfortunately I started

having problems with my right hand, so ...

As to the dead weight issue, I use the analogy to describe why we get

tired. The muscles just don't fire correctly and we accommodate the

deficiencies by swinging legs from the hip and bracing weak arms from

the shoulder. We make these accommodations without thinking but no

without effort. These efforts are fatiguing.

I work in schools, and often have to install software on computers

placed on tables sized for 5-7 year old kids. Squatting into tiny

chairs and having to extricate myself about 20 times a day just beats

me up.

Larry

[Guest guest]

I don't think of my legs as dead weight........I just think of them as great

exercise equipment....they are heavy and I have learned that the persistant

heavy feeling is actually building up different muscles in my legs making them

more useful.

Cathleen

[Guest guest]

Gretchen,

I'm afraid you may be the exception rather than the norm, though. Many of your

symptoms sound so much better than mine (and you even say that they've improved

over the years for you) whereas that doesn't happen for many other CMT patients

no matter what we

do.

Although I'm very happy for you, it also depresses me a bit that I can't match

your health no matter how hard I try. Larry's analogy helped me to put things

in perspective.