March 24, 2017

I had my other two driving lessons this week! On Monday, I drove for two and a half hours straight...all the way to Maryland and back! I drove through the tolls, got gas at a gas station, and traveled on a bunch of major road ways/interstates. On Thursday, I was with a different instructor and practiced parking and backing up. I was perfectly fine with parking when the spot was on my left, but for some reason, right sided parking was way more difficult! I'm waiting to get a letter from the DMV saying they've reviewed my medical records and are allowing me to schedule my road test. Once I get that scheduled, my instructors said they'll take me back out to practice a few more things so I am more prepared for the test. I'm still surprised at how natural it feels and don't know why I was so nervous about getting back behind the wheel. However, I know I'm going to be extremely nervous for the actual test! And it really sucks I can't just go out and practice every day because I don't have my own hand controls yet.

It felt like I had been gone from therapy for months, when it was really only two weeks. I was so glad to be back though. The pool sessions went really well and in the video I have, you can tell that I'm doing the walking pretty much on my own. All Dennis was doing was keeping my knee straight while I brought the other leg forward. It was definitely the best video I have from the pool so far.

I was really upset that I wasn't able to do the Esko, like I had planned, but it was still an eventful week. The therapist that works with the exoskeleton had a lot of meetings with the company, so we postponed my first session until next week. Quyen felt so bad about it that she tried to come up with something new and exciting for us to do in therapy to make up for it. She had me wear these leg length braces that helped me lock out my ankles and knees, making standing a lot easier, this way I could just focus on my core and do some weight shifting exercises. I wish I could have braces like this and learn to walk in them, but my therapists said that it would just be training my body "the wrong way" of doing things and kind of hinder my progress. Instead, I have to take the longer, harder way and teach my body the correct gait techniques and also wait for the regeneration of nerves and muscle strength to come back.

I also had a reassessment with Dennis this week. I was a little disappointed it was this week, right after having time off and directly after a session in the pool. My legs were so exhausted and I just felt like the assessment could've gone a lot better. Some of my core measurements, like reaching side to side, have improved in the last month, but everything else was pretty much the same. They've extended my therapy until the end of May for now, and I'm just hoping to get as much time in as I can before my birthday in July (because I turn 26 and lose my parent's insurance...but that's a discussion for another time).

I did some over ground walking with Dennis, and he was much harder on me this week (like more so than usual!) It's much easier for me to walk when someone completely straightens my knee, allowing me to weight shift better and bring the other leg forward. Well, first of all, he wasn't straightening my leg very much, which automatically made me work harder. Secondly, he had me supporting a lot more weight than usual and the harness wasn't holding me up very much. By the end of the day, I was pretty tired, but my legs were completely shot. I could've possibly pushed myself to do more, but my legs were absolutely useless. Guess that was a good way to get back in the groove of things!

I had a phone appointment with RTI- the stim bike company- on Friday morning. I talked to the girl for almost an hour. She changed a few settings and really took the time to explain things to me. A couple of the settings were locked in place, like my resistance and control speed, which wasn't allowing me to progressively improve. She changed it so that once I meet a certain speed or start going too fast, I can increase the resistance. You would think this would make everything harder and cause my power generated to decrease, but the craziest thing happened. My power went from around 9-10W to 18! I could tell it was harder to pedal, like when you increase the resistance on an elliptical or other piece of gym equipment, but somehow, my performance was better because all the other measurements improved.

I took an exam for school on Thursday and was really disappointed in myself. I didn't do very well, and I think it was more because the questions seemed impossible. It was supposed to just be a review, since I've already completed this course, but I just felt like it was way over my head. When my professor emailed me to ask what accommodations I might need in the future, I started thinking about it.. I don't think I need specific accommodations because of my situation, I think it's more because I had ONE exam for the whole course. I don't learn like that. I'm already a horrible test taker, and because I'm doing all of this on my own, at home, by just looking at powerpoint slides, I think I need something more...like more quizzes along the way, to make sure I'm actually learning the material. I do so much better with repetition, not memorization. I'm hoping to talk to my professors about this next time we talk, because this is so frustrating.