Recovery - Day 5, The Real Physio Begins

Even though I was completely and thoroughly advised of the risks of this surgery, I really had no clue. I look back on the early blog posts and think "yep", "yep", "nope", "out of your mind", "yep".

When my neurosurgeon said to me that rehab would eventually be walking on the treadmill and riding a stationary bike, I blissfully imagined checking out of the hospital on Wednesday, getting home, lazily spending the next days with other people taking care of me, and enjoying a 20 minute leisurely walk ... maybe with a bit of pain ... on the treadmill.

HA !!  Big fat HA !!  This physio is going to be HARD WORK.  Mostly because I will make it hard work. All those years of marathon training and finding my limits and pushing my limits and discovering that I survive is going to serve me well.  This kind of rehab is not for the feint of heart or feeble of fibre. I will get out what I put in. There's a reason I was warned that recovery would be four months not four weeks.

Today I did three things.

"Walked" (for lack of a better word)
a) walked with a high wheeled walker for 15 minutes - from sitting to sitting, so only about half that was walking. 

We, me and two physios, walked "the loop". The hallway around the nursing station.  Wahoo !  Maybe 250 feet.  My physio guy asked me if I wanted to stop and be wheeled back to my room.  Nope.  I want to feel tired.  I want to know what that is.  I can't push the limits if I can't differentiate "I don't feel like it" from "I'm at the end".  Because I know how easy it is for "I don't feel like it" to win. But that's not a win for me.



Sat
b) sat in a guest chair for 30 minutes.  My back is absolutely wonderful ... who knew, 14" incision, loss of pieces of 6 vertebrae and a ligament graft and my back feels great.  I've discovered that the sit  exercise isn't about my back, it's about my legs.  I'm an expert in sitting and lounging in bed (and in all honesty, am seriously enjoying that) but no longer an expert at sitting up ... mostly because my right foot keeps trying to fling itself off the floor.  I have motor function but little motor control in that leg, and if you get too close, you might get kicked. It takes a brave volunteer to put my shoes on for me.  I find it quite amusing, and I've accidently kicked my Birkenstocks across the room more than once, so it's running shoes only for now.

Parallel bars
c) parallel bar walking.  My SO got this on video and it will be fascinating to watch down the road.  But watching it today is eerie.  Very, very eerie.  I see myself, but only abstractly.  It looks like all the videos you see of people re-learning how to walk.  The legs are gawky, twisty, feet crossing, arms desperately supporting the body.  My physio guy is good, and spent a lot of time reminding me that parallel bars is about technique, not speed.  It is to remind your nerves of what walking should look like.  Wow ... last week I did a two hour bike ride, today I was trying to teach myself how to put one foot in front of the other.

It left me exhausted but exhilarated ... it felt great to push, to be tired from working hard, to hear someone say that there is progress, and for the neurosurgeon to tell me to hang in there. He believes in my recovery.  Maybe between his skill and my stubborness, we'll make that happen.

But the video is eerie.