“I bought this pair of one dollar flip flops and there was this puddle on the top step and the flip flop and the puddle did not agree with each other. My foot just went out from under me and I flew out from the steps and down onto the sidewalk, five steps, landing directly on the tailbone itself.”
Oscar member Kim is describing one of the worst days of her life. She was in a hurry and headed out the door to walk her dog, Walter. Walter was a Chihuahua-Jack Russell Terrier that Kim says was “maybe 10 years old and a very grumpy old man and very fat.” Needless to say, when she cracked her T11 vertebrae and lay there on the sidewalk in extreme pain, he went about his business and pretty much ignored her.
The vertebrae healed but what happened afterward was far worse. Alongside this accident, Kim developed an autoimmune disease that caused unbearable pain all over her body. “My hands were not functioning. I couldn't hold a pen. It was hard to type. My knees, my hips, everything. Every joint was swollen. I felt like I was 95 all of a sudden.”
This was devastating for Kim. She was very active, doing yoga, swimming, hiking and, of course, walking Walter. She ran her own business and was a freelance writer who had to “be on the ball all the time,” she says. “I started getting scared that I would not be able to make a living anymore and my life as I knew it was going to be over.”
She went to every doctor and specialist imaginable and never found a clear diagnosis. She “tried every kind of medicine known to mankind. Every shot. Every pill. Everything they could think of.” But nothing worked. She tried alternative medicine, Reiki, acupuncture, holistic doctors, supplements. She even tried drinking celery juice for a month. And she hates celery.
And then one day, everything changed. She got a secure message from her . “They said, ‘we understand you’ve been struggling,’ ” Kim says, “ ‘and we have this new program that we're trying out with an app.’ ”