Recently,my sister who is a physical therapist and I, finished Amy Purdy's book "On My Own Two Feet." I met Amy this past January in Denver at the opening ceremony of the Snow Sports Industry show where she was the keynote speaker. Amy is a Paralympic snowboarder and she is a three-time World Cup gold medalist, a 2014 bronze medalist in Sochi and the founder of Adaptive Action Sports, which is a nonprofit organization that helps youth, young adults and wounded veterans get involved with action sports.

Some of you may remember Amy because she was on the 18 th season of Dancing with the Stars with her dance partner Derek Hough. They were incredible and they won 2nd place for the season. It was particularly moving for my sister and I because she did it on her prosthetic legs which is an amazing feat itself. When she was 19 she lost her lower legs to bacterial meningitis. She faced death's door like so many of our patients who have had cancer have had to do and she chose to live.

I was taken with her when I met her because of the power of the human spirit I saw in her. You see I am use to seeing this is my patients as they fight for their new found life after chemo, radiation and their multiple surgeries to save their life. I often see my patients at the weakest moment in their life and so often they are at the door of choosing which way they will go. Will they choose to be bitter because of their disease or will they become better even if they have limitations? Will they choose to be the victim in this painful process or will they stand up and fight?

The human spirit amazes me when faced with these choices. The body will often fight for life but as it does the mind sometimes gets overwhelmed. Or other times the body is too fatigued to fight but the mind will pull the body along till it gets well. It's a mighty journey that my patients go on in order to heal. It takes fortitude, desire and love.

Amy said it best in her TEDxOrangeCoast talk. "Maybe instead of looking at our challenges and limitations as negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings - magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go farther than we ever knew we could go. It's not about breaking down borders, it's about pushing off of them, and seeing what amazing places they might bring us."

In order to heal we all may have to wander for a bit, asking questions or what ifs, or now what will I do with this part of my life I never planned on. I mean who plans on sickness or disability to be part of our landscape. But this part of healing is an extremely normal. Fear can creep in and often we get stuck. We aren't sure we can go back to the life we had before but we are be afraid to face the future because we aren't sure where we fit in it. So sometimes we have to sit and wait for time to heal us so we can slowly move forward one step at a time.

This weekend is the Race for the Cure at NIC where thousands of people will gather to fight breast cancer and honor those that are survivors. I challenge you to chose life and live it to its fullest with no limits.

Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy and she and her amazing staff can be reached in their Coeur d'Alene office at (208) 667-1988 and in their Spokane Valley office at (509) 891-2623. Please come see us this Sunday at our booth at NIC for the Race for the Cure event to fight breast cancer.