time and time and time and time again

In honor of the late superpower and pioneer of funk and soul, I must respectfully say...

Hello there, children!

Courtesy of my perfectionism, I've let news pile up without telling you. Let's get started.

Kicking things off, as of this past week I have been upgraded to four PT sessions each week! Now I'm on a Mon/Tues/Wed/Fri schedule, and it's awesome. Okay, maybe by the end of Wednesday's round I was completely shot. Okay, maybe before Wednesday even started. Oh well. I heart. This means that, combining official session time (4d*3h) and unofficial lunch hour e-stim biking (3d*1h), I'm up to 15h/week for just PT. Throwing in my time downstairs at OT, it's nearing 20h... Doesn't that qualify me for medical/dental coverage or something? ;-)

So what happens with the extra time in the new schedule? Well, MWF sessions are still the newly standard Giger --> (weights, sitting balance, manual chair propulsion, etc.) --> upper extremity e-stim bike. Then Tuesday, with a different therapist club from the other days (which is strange and kind of bittersweet, since my k/a MWF trainer is still there, but with a different patient), we plan to wing it a bit more. This past Tuesday, for example, we still started with the Giger for warm-up/cardio, but then we did a few new tricks on sitting balance, followed by a fairly long bout of manual chair cruising. In fact, since we spent more time in the silla (thanks ali-so!), I managed to wheel three laps around the track - that's around 300 meters, and one more lap than my previous best - with each lap loaded with rest breaks, of course, yet faster than the preceding. Grrr, muscles! Since I'm a lefty, though, and have subsequently built up more overall strength on that side, I really like to turn right.

Otherwise in PT, I'm working quite a bit on the uppers e-stim bike. It tears my traps up sumpin' fierce, but I guess that means it's working... Then with sitting balance, I can sort of nearly barely almost keep myself up with decent posture on my own for a split second? I have little trouble keeping my head up for most of the time (which also tortures the traps); comparing all of this to when I started rehab, umm, you'd notice. Finally, on Friday we did some prone (face-down) work. Equals not comfy plus still improving anyway.

On the occupational therapy front, it's been more picking up and twisting and stacking. One day I sorted a deck of cards. I don't think I'll be playing again anytime soon. We did another mini-eval, too - since I started a bit more than a month ago, I can move my right shoulder/arm about 10 degrees higher, when both in front and to the side. Rock. Still digging for fingers >;-}

Eh, we're done. The Olympics are calling... Oyasuminasai!