24 December 2008

devoid

four years post-injury...

still sucks, pals

07 December 2008

dull blades and evil penguins

Hello kitty! We're pretty light on worthy news this time. Wait, is any ever worthy?

PT: Wed and Fri were both bike/weights/sit in some order - long sit on the W, short sit for the F. Lots of "reach out and touch" action during sitting, which rapidly devolves into "picture people's faces and punch hard"... Remember, an angry patient is a strong patient! Grrr.

OT: Thurs session was violent in a more ninjaish fashion. Our plan for the rest of my OT time is to play around with all sorts of orthotic toys; this round was knives. Hyah. I tried out several different weapons, but the main conclusion was not to eat therapy putty.

Burnt hand update: 'tis in great shape. I'm keeping the worst finger wrapped to protect the part that remains slightly open, so there are still birds for everyone, but we're not afraid to use the grip gloves for weights, Giger, etc. No more hookers, I guess.

Dumb joke spoiler: for those who have been following along and wondering, the "hookers" are just wrist straps with metal hooks on them, mostly useful for operating the cable-based weight machines without using hands or fingers. I'm not kidding, though, each is quite prominently branded "The Hooker". Not exactly P-C marketing genius.

More stuff with a colon: the plan is still to return to cville 'round the 18th. It's way way cold here. Insurance is being dumb about getting a manual chair, but I think we can out-dumb them. Badtz-Maru is by far the best Sanrio character. Most animals have colons. I heart coffee.

Methinks that's all. Catch you on the cosmic highway.

02 December 2008

vvvvvvvv

Hello all! Prepare to be oversummarized, though somehow still windily.

Last week's therapy was more of the new stuff. I don't remember exactly what happened when, but there took place tricep/shoulder exercises on the Wave vibration plate, more of the bolster-supported army crawl, some long sitting (legs out straight), a brief session of improvised weight training (careful with the hand), all sorts of leg e-stim bike - surprise! - and some more peanut sitting.

Wave work is way way effective! Perhaps even wave effective. Har har. I can do much stronger tricep extensions on that machine vs. without vibration because I can constantly feel where my triceps are and what I need to do to contract. Cooler, though, was the peanut party; once the PT put my hips into proper pelvic tilt position (pull the hips forward so that my lower back is unslouched and back/legs are at the perfect posture angle), all of my back/shoulders/neck/head would just snap into place and I would all of a sudden be sitting perfectly upright! Even better, after getting into this position, I could use my lower trunk muscles to hold it without assistance for even up to 30sec or so. eee! If only I could get into the position on my own...

So that was last week, which was only MTW (lunes/martes/miercoles, lundi/mardi/mercredi, segunda/terca/quarta, mon/dien/mitt, getsu/kay/sui... choose your poison) due to the holiday and my lack of desire to go in on F (v/v/s/f/k, respectively).

This week so far: Monday was leg zap bike, more improv weights, and some short sit stuff. After a delicious four days of nothing, my muscles were recharged and ready to go... But joints? Not so much. Hello, pain meds.

This Tuesday was another interesting variety pack. Bien sûr, warmup on the leg bike. Then Wave craziness. I started out doing bizarro pushups - most of my body lying chest down on a mat/table/whatever, hanging off the end from the chest on up. To do the exercise, put hands on the vibration plate and push to elevate the upper body. Verdict: I am such a wimp. Recall from grade school P.E. that pushups are almost entirely a tricep task, and also recall from just about any previous post that my triceps are mega weak! The vibration effects helped a bit, but I still needed mod/max assistance to pull these off. PS, hanging half of your upper body off the end of a table does not yield any comfort whatsoever. However, impossibly difficult? Incredibly uncomfortable? Sounds like the ingredients for an effective workout to me!

Also on the Wave were a few other slightly more tame shoulder and tricep exercises. Then it was off to one of the big mats for some "bed mobility", aka rolling side to side. Shoulders voted no to this stuff rather quickly. Snap crackle pop.

To wrap up Tuesday, I had my first real return-of-OT session! Yay. I put coins in a cup for the whole session. That was a lot of nickels. It was fairly hard since my hands were so stretched out from all the hand-body support I had done earlier on the Wave. Tenodesis (magical natural passive hand grip) just doesn't work with rubber fingers. Sure would be easier with some voluntary digital control.

Anyway, what did I do with the recent super-long weekend? Well... Nothing, of course! Wednesday we had a floor mini-party with food, festive tunes, and cream cheese oreo magic. Thursday: sleep. Friday: sleep. Saturday: sleep. Sunday: sleep. I strive to be the most boring person on the planet.

Hand update: still keeping my most burnt finger wrapped, although it's fixing itself much faster than I expected. The blisters on the other fingers have essentially disappeared. We're still taking it easy on the wrapped one since one of its wounds hasn't closed up yet; hence, no Giger, careful weight bearing on that hand, and improvised methods on the weight training. No arm e-stim bike either, as that would also require grip gloves. At least I can do weights with Hookers!

Might that be all? Possibly maybe. Björk out.