When I was in the hospital, I wanted to have a baseline to compare my recovery. I wanted to know wanted to know when my legs would start to move, when my bladder and bowels would recover, when I would be strong enough to stand, etc.
Except for that I would probably spend a year in a wheelchair and that I would be walking "well enough: in two years (and this was stated when it was thought I had Guillain-Barre syndrome). And no answer to when and how the bladder/bowel would recover.
Finding info on regaining the ability to walk wasn't so bad. There were some stories of people were able to walk again, but there were other stories of people who were still not able to so after some years, and some who took several years to regain enough strength to stand. However, just finding stories of walking recovery were difficult to find.
As far as bowel and bladder recovery, I found even less info.
So, initially, I wanted to share my chronology. I know everybody recovers at a different pace, and the amount of recovery differs among individuals, and the issues differ depending on where the injury(ies) took place, but if I contributed my story, there would be at least a record of how, how long, and how much I recovered from my issues.
But as I wrote the book, and as I experienced a rather rapid pace towards "normal enough," my theme seemed to change from providing my story to which others can compare to, to providing an inspirational and motivational piece for someone who finds him/herself in a similar situation - and reach out to those who have issues other than physical, and perhaps use the same strategies I did (finding inspiration, movitation and working towards goals) to overcome his/her obstacles - with the one advantage I did not have, which is the trial and error I went through to find the right mind-set and action-set.
So, what I think I ended up, with Toe Up to 10K, is a book, superficially chronicles the timeline and progress I made during my recovery, but is really about how I drew inspiration and motivated myself to recover as best as I could. I realize that I've had a remarkable recovery, and I know not all of it is due to own hard work - that my body responded to some intangibles, but I don't think I would have recovered as well as I have without the work I put into recovery - and ultimately, I just wanted to share my story, for I believe each story of a successful builds upon other people's stories and provides inspiration for those who found themselves in the same situation I found myself in two years ago.