Writing from bed

I am thinking about getting ready for bed, now that Nancy has re-bandaged my stomach. The hospital folks did their usual lame assed job. But the good part is that despite the surgical procedure, I am in good spirits and tomorrows I will be able to go out and walk to my heart's content. That will make my day much more fun. Might even be able to get in some light PT. For now, it is bedtime.

Pain and Torture

That's what PT stands for. Not physical therapy. I have done my years of therapy. It involved lots of talking, and too-soft couches. There is none of that where I do my PT. Just machines that push and pull and prod and creak. Then there are the sounds I make! Creak and groan and wail and gnash and sob.

There's no mistaking one therapy for another. This is the real deal. They are slowly but surely rebuilding my busted body and replacing it with one who just might be able to dance!

Today we dealt with the right shoulder's bursitis, the left shoulder's over stressed muscles, my ongoing pain in my feet, calves and shins, and my abdominal pain from the surgery. Yeah, we hit all that fun in nearly 2 hours of PT.

Somehow though, I wish I could go back tomorrow for more. My ankles and feet feel better after a brutal day on balance boards and wobbly squishy balls. My arms move better after being twisted and leveraged out of their painful locked up state. Best of all, coordination is growing by leaps and bounds. Proprioception is the big word of the week. Can't wait for next week!

Helpless

Tonight I figured I would write a little bit about being helpless. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I spent a month of this fall in a coma. In the following three weeks before I entered the rehab unit, I drifted in and out of a drug induced haze. I was unable to move a muscle. Not a finger. On top of that I was unable to speak for the better part of two weeks. During this time I was expected to participate in PT while still in the ICU. In order to do this I was lifted bodily out of bed by means of a hoist device. I would be strapped in, nylon bands cutting across my torso and groin, pinching my catheter, my feeding tube, oxygen tube, and a half dozen more wires and hoses getting caught on all sorts of things. This then would pull at my face, crotch, chest, you name it. It was never simple. Some days I would get whacked in the face (more than once!) with the spreader bar of the hoist. It was never uneventful or relaxing.

Then they would move me to a reclining chair with the premise that being upright would help circulation and help get me over my pneumonia (which it did). For the first week, being upright made me cry. It was all I could do to sit up. I couldn't even hold myself upright. I would start to lean within about 4 minutes. Some days the PT nurse would do range of motion exercises and I couldnt even add any input. By the end of the second week, about the time I could finally talk via this device attached to my trach tube, I was ready to speak my mind.

Instead I found myself so grateful to be able to communicate, to be able to tell Nancy how much I loved her, to be able to talk to Aurora to let her know I was ok and that she was loved... with all of that foremost in my mind, I couldnt really complain.

Which brings me to my thought for the evening: there is a transition from being helpless to being able to begin to help yourself. For me, I knew I was making that transition when I was able to help encourage others on the rehab ward. So what does it mean to help yourself? What does it really mean to be helpless? How does one ask for help? I am lousy at asking for help. Yet as soon as I was unable to physically ask for help, it came out of the woodwork.

I cant begin to thank everyone who has helped Nancy, Aurora and I. Without a doubt, we couldn't have done it without help. I would not have made it back from that coma without all the help we received. Saying thank you sounds so small compared to how I feel. I am so thrilled to be alive... to be back... to know I have more life to live.

Many friends have asked what it was like in the coma. I am going to try to write about it. I will probably try to put it into a small book form rather than the blog. If you have a desire to read it when it's finished, let me know. I can tell you it wont all make sense and the imagery is both personal and surreal.

For now though, I need to catch up on some sleep before another day of PT tomorrow.

More Steps Towards Freedom

Today being Saturday, we have the day "off" from PT. What it really boils down to is that we get just 1/2 hr of PT and that's it for the day. The PT nurse was someone new who'd never worked with me but was willing to pick up right where my usual PT nurses left off yesterday. The best part was that she had many different techniques and approaches to essentially the same movements.

The best part of PT though was more walking. This time it was different. The PT nurse decided it was time for me to try it without the assistance of the various appliances we've been using. Instead I held her hand lightly (didnt really need it) and walked down to the nurse's station. On the way back I had to stop and hold onto the wall for a minute. It is extremely exhausting walking any distance still, but doing it freehand required so much more concentration, focus and strength that I was just exhausted after my walk. It was a fantastic sense of freedom. This was the farthest I have walked and it was just a hint of what is to come this week as we prepare to send me home. I may end up walking at home with a cane for a while as I regain my strength and stamina. So much muscle to grow back still.

That was Saturday. A day "off" but still a day of learning and pushing this body to relearn how to walk and move. More fun tomorrow!

Adventures on a Thursday

Normally Thursdays are just another day of hard work on the rehab floor. Today things were a little different. For one thing, I was in a lot more pain (I asked for my pain meds to be decreased earlier in the week)...but more importantly, I got a new walker today. This one is sized for my height and best of all, HAS WHEELS! So I can totally cruise now. The biggest coup today though was walking with just the assistance of the wall. Yep, I was cruising the hall just holding onto the wall... a week ago I couldnt hold a pen or lift a book. Strength is slowly coming back but it is one heck of a growth curve. I have never experienced this level of pain before. Each day there is two to three hours of PT and OT. Today the OT was showering. Two showers in two days. Talk about perfect! The only downside is that it takes about twenty towels and half an hour to shower. I can finally wash myself unassisted which does a ton towards making me feel MUCH more human.

I am slated to go home in ten days. That means I have a lot of healing to do. I want to go home fully capable of climbing our stairs unassisted, of walking from the car to anywhere in the house... it just means I have to keep pushing myself everyday in PT.