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January 2025
I'm convinced 2025 is cursed, not just for me, but for so many other people on this planet. However, I'm also convinced that curses are often blessings in disguise.
The holidays came and went as did the steady flow of family and friends. Once Christmas was over, we had one more thing to celebrate before the New Year, and that was my son's birthday. I was so excited for him to get together with old friends, kids he rarely sees nowadays due to crazy schedules.
We were planning to have his birthday party here at the house where we'd have an epic Nerf battle. My son and his friends were bouncing off the walls excited about it.
For me, the end of the year is a chance for me to catch my breath and acknowledge my victories and defeats and then use the knowledge I've gained to set some fresh goals for the up-and-coming year. And so, I went to work goal setting and visualizing what 2025 was going to look like.
I visualized selling my script, THE ONLY WAY OUT, for seven-figures and then I visualized being part of the entire filmmaking process. I visualized the film's premier, visualized the audience experiencing the roller-coaster of emotions I have built into this thriller. I visualized the film being an incredible success and I visualized all the awards-nominations the film would garner for cast and crew.
But, more importantly, I visualized how my film could leave an impact on the world, how its portrayal of a mother doing the most horrific thing imaginable to save her son would change perceptions of women, mothers to be exact. I also visualized how my script would call attention to some very, nasty and dangerous issues affecting US Forest Service and BLM lands.
I then visualized my daughter and I making it through our upcoming, super intense 12-14 hour blackbelt test. As of December, we had four-and-a-half months until the test and the test is fittingly scheduled on the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend. My daughter and I were so excited, but also a little scared and I visualized celebrating with her after the test. I then visualized the perfect Mother's Day spent relaxing and celebrating our new blackbelt status.
My daughter and I've been training together for years, pushing each other to do our best and comforting each other when things get tough, or when we endure a minor, but painful injury. I visualized the two of us rocking the test, overcoming whatever obstacles we encountered, and achieving our goal of being the oldest and youngest blackbelt candidates in the dojo.
For me, this has been a lifelong journey, a bucket list item for a very, long time, one of those nagging, incomplete tasks I needed to finish. I've started and stopped karate 4 different times at 3 different dojos over 4 decades, once because my family moved and the other three times because of chronic pain issues due to undifferentiated connective tissue disease, hypermobility, scoliosis, and fibromyalgia.
Fortunately, in recent years, thanks to the most amazing rheumatologist on the planet and the right combination of prescription drugs, my medical issues are finally under control and, despite a few gnarly hiccups with my angry lumbar spine, I finally made it to the rank of junior blackbelt! Just one more belt to go! I visualized making it through the remaining four-and-a-half months to the blackbelt test.
I visualized the excitement I'd feel when Sensei wrapped that hard-earned blackbelt around my waist. And I visualized her excitement, too. My Sensei (a 5th degree blackbelt) is a woman, something incredibly rare in the martial arts world.
One day Sensei mentioned that she had only ever awarded a blackbelt to one other woman, another mother and she was super excited that I'd be the second woman/mother to earn a blackbelt from her, a huge accomplishment for both of us!
I moved on and set a lot of other goals and decided that, apart from the terrifying and nauseating political situation, 2025 was going to be AMAZING!
BUT...
JINX!
Life had other ideas.
The day before my son's birthday at the end of December, I woke up with excruciating pain from my neck down my left arm and into my left hand and even my left ribcage. It was beyond awful. Worse, my left arm was weak and numb from my forearm down to my fingers. I tried all the pain meds and muscle relaxers I had in the house (used them as prescribed) and nothing touched the pain. Something was very, very wrong.
Long story short, that something turned out to be a serious disc herniation at C6/C7, one which required emergency cervical spine surgery. Spinal fusion to be exact. It gets better. Rather than just fusing the two vertebrae between which the disc blew out, C6/C7, the neurosurgeon noted the smaller herniation at the C5/C6 level and said it would be wise to fuse that level, too, in order to avoid another surgery.
New Year, New Me
And so, I went into surgery in excruciating pain and came out bionic with two titanium cages, a titanium plate, and six titanium screws in my spine.
It sounds severe, but it wasn't that bad. In fact, I woke up in almost no pain and was incredibly grateful for that and the fact that I could feel my forearm again, even though I still couldn't feel the back of my hand or thumb, index, and middle finger. I was also grateful my left arm wasn't as weak as it had been, too.
The neurosurgeon said the rest of my hand could take months or years to heal, or it may not heal at all. I choose to be optimistic. The downside was that I was stuck in a cervical collar with a wound drain tube sticking out of my neck and the collection container resting in my lap.
I also learned that the C-collar would be with me 24 hours a day for the next 3 months, during which time I can't drive, and I also had to come to terms with the fact that the majority of my 2025 will be spent recovering, growing bone, and rebuilding the strength and endurance I'm losing during recovery.
In other words, there will be no karate for a long time. I can't even step on the mats to assistant teach. Amy: 0, Diseased Body: 1. It's heartbreaking, but I can't cry because gratitude has made tears impossible.
I'm so grateful my daughter will still test for her blackbelt in May, and I'll get to be there to cheer her on. Hopefully, the following May I'll finally get to test for mine (but this time I'm not making any goals).
I'm so grateful because when I was in the hospital, everyone from the emergency room staff, operating room staff, nurses, doctors, radiologists, housekeeping staff and food services staff took incredible care of me. They were all amazing human beings, each of whom went above and beyond to take care of me, to talk to me and laugh with me and share their stories with me during the 3 days and 2 nights I spent in the hospital.
I'm so grateful for my son's friend's parents who let our son stay the night with them the day I'd had surgery, and they offered to take my daughter, too.
I'm so grateful for the outpouring of support from family and friends and everyone at our dojo. I have never been the recipient of so much kindness and so many incredible meals. (I'm the one who usually organizes the dojo Meal Trains for people who are going through a tough time, so it was a little strange being on the receiving end.)
And I'm also so grateful for my wonderful husband and kids and to our neighbors, one of whom rushed my husband to urgent care when, less than a week after I had surgery, he nearly cut his finger off with a chisel. I'm grateful to my parents for taking turns staying at our house to take care of me and help get the kids to and from school and activities.
I'm grateful for my nurse friend who stepped in when we couldn't reach our son's on-call pediatrician when he was covered from head-to-hives after eating something that obviously didn't agree with him.
And I'm so grateful to all the people who've reached out and offered to help in some way. To my daughter's school principal who said she could connect us with some staff members who live in our city to drive our daughter 25 minutes to school.
Sometimes bad things happen, but the good that comes out of those bad things often outweighs the bad if you let it. So even though 2025 seems to be cursed, it also seems to be blessed.
Because of those blessings and because this was surgery #10 for me, I was able to come to a place of acceptance a lot sooner than most people.
In terms of the dojo, I volunteered to continue to set up Meal Trains for people who needed additional help during a difficult time. I also volunteered to take on the role of inventorying donated karate clothing/gear so we could connect those items with families in need of gear for their kids and will stay active in our assistant teacher training classes, which are not workouts, but dojo debriefings.
I will try again to earn my blackbelt in May 2026. Until then, you can follow my upbeat recovery journey on my YouTube channel @GiaquintoProductionsLLC.
On my channel, you'll find all of my full-length MAMA FIX IT™ episodes along with a bunch of 1 minute or less shorts sharing the progress I'm making with my recovery. Enjoy!
Also, I'm working on a full-length MAMA FIX IT™ episode that tells my full story and how to make it through cervical spine surgery and the recovery process. Be sure to subscribe to my email list so you can be updated the moment it's released and to stay up to date with my blog.
When you subscribe to my email list, as a token of my gratitude, I'll send you a coupon for 15% off anything in my store.
Also, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel as well. My goal is to get 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year. Your support is greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Moving on...
As for my other goal, to sell THE ONLY WAY OUT in 2025... As you might recall, the script was with Netflix and Utopia Distribution, and we were hoping to hear back after the Sundance Film Festival, which ends Feb 2nd this year.
Anyway, I had just arrived home from the hospital when...
JINX!
Oh my gosh, I can't believe what you've had to go through! And your attitude is so amazing through all of it. Something good has got to happen for you this year. Something really really good!