My daughter Kayleigh and I were about the same weight when my mother suffered her second stroke in 2012. At the time, our lifestyle was not very good. Being single mother of a daughter with Down syndrome And my mother’s caregiver in Austin, Texas (United States), I used to choose the easiest thing: fast food for dinner, things that we say are cheap, but for which you have to pay a high price, healthy speaking.
I remember sitting by my mother’s bed crying. Then we learned that she was permanently disabled, and that this posed a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. This also touched Kayleigh closely; people with Down syndrome have a 90 percent chance of developing Alzheimer’s. Hear this and see my daughter with about 100 kilos and a number of conditions including prediabetes, sleep apnea, a rare blood platelet condition called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), and hyperthyroidism that led to Graves disease.
This was our turning point. I don’t want to have my daughter in a hospital bed in the future where I have to say, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help you by putting some healthier habits into practice in our lives, and this is where we ended up.” It was time to change.
Like many parents in my situation, it is difficult to start a journey like this. At first you will say, “My child cannot do this,” but in reality, the parent does not see himself doing it and can project that onto the child. I have been handed the worst-case scenarios for Kayleigh since she was born. However, my focus with my daughter has always been that you should not allow someone to put limits on your path.
We all have limits, what we can do and what we can’t do, but we work hard to get what we can do. What we cannot do, we also celebrate and say that this is someone else’s business. Kayleigh and I started WW, a program that helps you lose weight healthily. The first thing we did was change our diet using this app’s point system, so we cut out artificial sweeteners and ultra-processed foods, and started going to the farmers market on Saturdays to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.
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Courtesy of Sandy Williamson
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Using the WW app gave Kayleigh control over what she ate, and that was the best for us. She knows how to scan her food. You know that if you eat a banana, it will be a better option than eating cookies because they will probably cost you five points. At the same time, Kayleigh’s changes benefit me too. If she doesn’t drink soda, I don’t drink soda. I see this lifestyle change as a good thing for the whole house. I think that is a crucial point because she is going to do what she sees the rest of the people who live in her home doing.
Your first kilometers
What also helped us in this process was starting to race together from the beginning. I started racing in 2012 and Kayleigh joined me in 2013. I often felt like the mother of hell during those first few races because it wasn’t easy at all. We were reaching the middle of a race and she would slow down. That was the way to control her. But I told him you have to go faster; we have a deadline.
In the end, as a mother, I realized that I had to take a pain reliever and take a step back. In general, in races we are always last, and that’s fine with us. But we get better the more kilometers we do. One thing that has helped Kayleigh is that she knows she has to earn the right to set foot on the starting line of the Austin Distance Challenge.
This famous test is a series of five or six races that increase in distance from 5K to half marathon or marathon over the course of a year. Each time, we have to finish in a certain time. His first 10-mile run, which was his third in the series, took us nearly five hours, which was over the allotted time. That meant Kayleigh lost her right to participate in the next race.
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Courtesy of Sandy Williamson
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We kept working on it, and he finally ran the 10 mile race in the allotted time in his junior year. Kayleigh was very excited to move on to the 21K, which she completed in February 2017 in a time of 6:22 during the Austin Half Marathon. Finally, he finished the race on time and completing the distance challenge. The organizers were waiting for her at the finish line with her distance challenge jacket to put on. It’s a moment that she and I will never forget.
I will not fool anyone; it has been a battle. But for me, it’s no different than when you fight for them to take the recipes. The only difference is that this one, for me, has a better result. Kayleigh is healthy. You have lost more than 35 kilos, and that it maintains today. Not only that, Kayleigh’s rare blood condition went into remission. His sleep apnea has disappeared. His Graves disease went into remission and has done so for four years.
Typically, people with Down syndrome at their age, 30, have more autoimmune disorders than they are diagnosed with. Kayleigh even wrote a children’s book about his first half marathon. She has a whole new life, and that’s because we made a commitment to achieve this lifestyle change. Eight years after starting this journey, we are still doing half marathons, and we are even training for their first marathon.
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If you have a message or advice for anyone who is in a similar situation or who wants a healthy life for their child, you have to follow what you know is right and healthy for them. You are the one there. You are the one who supports them. Some doctors told me that half marathons were too much for her at first. Now, that’s not what they say. Sometimes in the medical community, there will be people who give you the worst case scenario.
But don’t let that limit what your child can become. To give them that support, you have to be there, hand in hand, with them. You can’t just drop them off at a dance studio and say, well here’s your dance time and I’ll pick you up again. You have to be in there dancing with them. You actually have to be there running with them. It is a commitment for them, but also for you. They will only go as far as you give them wings to go and as much as you help them carry them too.
Via: Runner’s World US
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