April 2, 2017

Ever since inpatient rehab, I have been known to set goals and achieve them in a very short time frame. It started with my first goal of wanting to be able to scratch my own nose. The medications I was on made my nose so itchy and I wasn't able to lift my own arm up or even speak in order to let anyone know what I needed...I was always making whatever nose I could manage to come out of my mouth in order to get someone's attention, and then find myself wiggling my nose (like the actress in "Bewitched") to signal how itchy it was. I set the goal of being able to do this by myself on my first day at Magee. I achieved that goal before the end of the week. Most of my inpatient rehab continued this way. I guess it's understandable because I literally couldn't move anything when I arrived. It was easy to achieve small goals because any improvement was progress...and when you have nothing, anything you do seems like a huge accomplishment. My goals continued- feeding myself, putting my  contacts in, getting my hair into a ponytail, etc. It also became a joke that anytime my therapists got a hold of the adaptive equipment I needed in order to make a specific task easier, I didn't need it anymore. Like the effort they went through to install a sling-like device on my chair that would help keep my arm elevated so that I could feed myself. We got it set up and I never had to use it...not even once. We'd say "let's install this piece of equipment just so you won't need it anymore."

Now that I've made a lot of progress, my goals have become much harder to achieve. My current goals consist of: 

-being able to take apart, load, and then unload my chair from the car by myself (this takes a lot of problem solving, like how to position the seat, how to hold my chair, what to load first; not to mention how much core strength it takes!)

-standing independently in the parallel bars for a longer length of time (I no longer require someone breaking their fingers while holding the harness around my hips, but again, this takes a LOT of core strength)

-"sit- to- stands" from 21 inches. I've achieved this goal from 24 inches, but my chair height is 21, so I'd like to be able to stand from that height with a walker. If I could do this, I'd be able to practice at home and continue to improve.

-uneven transfers. Going from a high surface to a lower surface is easy, you've got gravity on your side. Doing the opposite is another story. I've become a lot more independent and like to get on and off the couch or into different chairs (not to mention when I use public bathrooms on my own and the toilet is something crazy like 14 inches!) I've asked my therapists to help me with this because it only helps me be more independent and more comfortable getting out of my chair in public..it's nice to sit in the booth with my friends when we go out to dinner and not have to stay in my chair...it's a small thing, but it's one more step towards feeling "normal." 

I achieved one of my goals this week and got to cross it off my list..and that goal was to be able to use the Eskoskeleton in therapy. It took me a whole YEAR to achieve this, which is the longest I've had a goal during this whole journey (well, besides being able to walk again). I have lost 20lbs (probably even more, since I haven't weighed myself in a couple weeks and I know how much looser my clothes are fitting) and over two inches off my hips. Of course there are less women using this device because of the hip width requirement (men have it so much easier, right?!) I've waited so long to do this in therapy and I was actually a little worried I wouldn't like it, like all that time I had it in my head that this was going to be the greatest thing, and then it would be nothing like I had imagined for so long. Luckily, that didn't happen. I loved it! I got in without a problem and spent the whole hour kind of get used to what I'm supposed to do. The machine was sensing my weight shifts, and then taking the step for me. As I get better and better, the therapist can make the settings more difficult and make it so that I'm doing more work and the machine is doing less. It felt kind of robotic, but at the same time, it was the most natural piece of gait training equipment I've used...and I've used a lot! I think the plan is to do this for an hour each week and I already can't wait until this Wednesday.