Someone Used Their STERN Voice

Today was different.

My neurosurgeon was grumpy this morning ... not a day for idle chit chat. He usually stops by on his way into his office, so I see him around 8:30am.  While pleased with how the incisions are healing, he did not seem pleased with the amount or quality of physio I've had in the five days I've been in the rehab unit.  In their defense, two of those days were a weekend, but I've really only had three physio sessions, plus weekend homework, in the five days.

Less than an hour later, Physio lady is in my room, wanting to assess how I transfer from bed to wheelchair, from wheelchair to toilet, and back.  Assess general stuff like putting on my socks and shoes, getting clothes from the drawers and other random day-to-day stuff.  Then we went walkies in the wheelchair.  New instructions to not use my arms with the wheelchair, but to walk with my feet, concentrate on heel strike, toe push, heel strike, toe push.

Wish she'd shown me that on Friday.

Session with Exercise guy was totally different today too.  We started out with the walker, stumbling around the gym, then on to some serious standing exercises. Standing on these spikey inflated thingies (how's that for a technical term - see picture) in my bare feet.  The pins and needles feelings in my feet were going crazy! Stand, squat, stand, squat.  Lots of shuffle to the right, and shuffle to the left, and lots of resistance training.  A full hour of "beat up on my right leg".   But most importantly, we ended the session with another walk with the walker.  I could actually feel the floor under the ball of my right foot, and my right knee wasn't giving out.  I wouldn't say it was a controlled or comfortable walk, but exercise guy wasn't holding me up, and I was doing it.   I count that as a success.

Session with Sensory guy was a low intensity workout for me because he was experimenting with TENS.  Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (lots of bigs words).  The nerves in my right leg were damaged such that I have peripheral neuropathy -  I don't have a sense of feel and I have no situational awareness (at rest, I can't tell you where my leg is). This loss of position sense is what makes me unable to coordinate complex movements, ergo, I cannot walk. The sensory nerves that should be sending messages back to the brain are firing, but because of surgery trauma, the communication isn't getting through my spinal cord up to my brain.  The purpose of TENS is to bombard my spinal cord with these impulses to encourage the nerve to heal itself. A couple of electrodes, crank up the juice and off we go. Kinda cool, and after a morning of tough love, I was good with lying back and being electrocuted :) 

I don't know what was said, or if anything was said, but it sure seems like someone used their stern voice this morning to say get her walking!!.

I am thankful.