There are many things I am not sure I will ever see. Views I may only know in travel logs. My dream of seeing Everest seemed so far away before, that it brought with it the comfort of time to manifest this goal. But something happened I did not plan. I was convinced Everest wasn't going anywhere. But then it did. To someone else's view.

There are people who beat odds. Who prevent a health challenge from stealing their dream. The blind man who climbed K-2, and the cancer survivor who passed him on her way to the top. But who are we who can only watch because we were left with only a will to dream? What are we called when pain prevents our dream from coming true? Our desire is no less. But our bodies cannot endure. So what do we do?

We do what we can to make a different dream come true. A dream we never knew we had, because the first one got in the way. For myself, a mountain stood between me and a passion I never knew I had. To write. To bare my soul in front of the world I now may never see.

Facing a health challenge is much like childbirth. Few will tell you how difficult it will really be, because if they did, the human race would surrender.

So I had to find a way on my own to manage the unknown. I had to find a tool to chisel a vision to help me see through what was in front of me. I began to write a new dream. Writing has caused the crumbling of my soul into finite grains of sand blown by the grace of God's breath. But it has also gathered it back and shaped my soul into something stronger than it ever knew could be.

My latest MRI shows additional deterioration in C7-T2. My arms weaken by the day. I await my electro spine stimulator implant surgery to ease the lumbar pain and offer stability to my leg that no longer lifts. Tomorrow is a CT Myelogram of the lumbar spine, with cervical and thoracic Myelograms to follow. Friday we begin facet blocks to determine where to cauterize the nerves in the new-found areas of degenerated discs. But on Thursday I shall celebrate the treatment of something new and different. Something to add spice to my taco salad of where's-the-beef casserole. A root canal. Yes. A root canal. In tooth number fifteen. It's just nice to have a procedure for a part of my body that cannot possibly be the spine. There's no T-15, or C-15. So it's a welcome change. But it's a change that would have floored me a year ago when this all began. Before I felt God's breath on my skin. Before I was this kind of strong. Before the writing could begin.

I would like to say I will have this thing licked. I would like to say I will walk again, that my pain will be managed, that I will stand at the base of the mountain I have dreamed of since I was a child. But the truth is, I have never felt so raw, so shattered, and willing to surrender. But through writing, I have realized that is what will make my life worth living when this living ends.

I have faith, that if God can build a mountain that I want to climb, the least He can let me do is touch it. Someday. When the pain is gone. When my legs are strong. When a light surrounds my thoughts and angels lift my soul. I will stand with others like me, on the other side of our dream, and life will come true. But for now, I will embrace my challenge and know this is no lesser a dream than what I had before. He simply wanted me to have one filled with pages, a cover, and a much more meaningful view.