Greetings!
It’s been a pretty exciting past few days for me. I received a tremendous outpouring of birthday wishes, cards, and visitors. Thank you to all. Last Friday, my mother arranged for a personal chef to come in and cook dinner for Kristy and I. And what a great dinner it was. We feasted on filet mignon, potatoes, brussels sprouts, capresse salad and bread pudding with hard sauce. And of course, a bottle of Cabernet. It probably was, honestly, one of the best steaks I have had; and I am not just saying that because I haven’t had many steaks in the past several months. It truly was that good. Plus, Kristy brought some of our favorite music to listen to. On my way back to the room that night, I ran my wheelchair into the wall – it was quite humorous and several of the aides accused me of having too much wine. Nonsense, you can never have too much wine!
This past week of therapy was probably the best week I have had. First of all, I have stopped wrapping my legs with ace wraps, as I am now very stable with my blood pressure. The wraps had previously been used to support my blood pressure while sitting up. This was a small moral victory for me. Secondly, I continued to work on using my shoulders to generate arm and hand motion. In addition to strapping my hands to the hand bike and using the shoulders to pedal the bike, I’ve also been pushing bean bags off the table. This is accomplished by lining up several beanbags near the edge of the table, placing my hand, wrist and elbow on the table, and using my shulder to generate enough strength and force to slide my entire arm forward and push the beanbags off the table. Believe it or not, this works up quite a sweat and is tougher than the workouts I used to do in the weight rooms. It also requires much more coordination, especially when using the hand bike and trying to pull one shoulder up while pushing the other shoulder forward. Nonetheless, in my mind, I found these smallest events to be a rewarding achievement. I also credit a lot of this progress to my Physical Therapist, Lauren, who I work with every day. She is not afraid to challenge me and get aggressive trying new things. Third, the weather last week was beautiful and I spent some time outside every day. The fresh air felt great. I can’t wait for every day to be warm and sunny, although it is Cleveland, so I probably have at least 4 more months to wait. Finally, my alma mater, Lehigh, won the Patriot League championship and secured an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. while I don’t expect to pencil their name in too many times in my bracket, its exciting to see them in there.
I am trying to track down an Easy Stand and a Tilt Table for PT use. For those of you familiar with what I am talking about, please let me know if you know of any place I can find these used or reasonably priced for new.
Hope to provide another post soon.
Scott