29 July 2009

FTW

Hey all! I've been feeling rather fevery for a few days, but here's something (zealously cropped for privacy) to enjoy:






That's right, weight-bearing through my legs on the Norris-endorsed Total Gym (recall, nerds, vertical force here = earth's gravity times my mass times the sine of the angle of incline [F_y = mGsinθ]).

And, much to the shock and dismay of myriad anti-progress folk, my bones didn't turn into calcium-flavored Jell-O! Ha.

It's a start - finally a move in the right direction.

23 July 2009

brazocycle

Here's a quick shot of the aforementioned arm bike, bad posture and all. Woohoo.



Happy whatever. Word out.

19 July 2009

smrt

Hellooooooooo...

Hi-qual PT and OT this week! Tues/Wed PT was actually not that phenomenal; nothing new the first day, and about 2h of thoroughly subpar mat work before e-stim bike on the second. Friday, though, new activity! Sandwiched between weights and zap biking was some time on the real arm bike. Think giganto wheelchair-turned-tricycle, with arm pedaling to provide propulsion through the front wheel. It's a hacked ten-speed, really, gears and all. I just did laps around the indoor track - no big adventures - although it was an adventure weaving around the zillion other people also doing laps. You might safely guess that I in arm cycle was a bit faster than others much harder at work crawling or walking on their own... Somehow I managed not to injure myself or anyone else. Weee.

OT was new stuff as well this week. We played the reschedule/cancel game, so I only had one session. Oh well. I think I've explained before that my arms are extremely hypersensitive, seemingly as part of the natural progression of improvement and extension of normal perception of touch sensation. For now it's to the point where I usually keep my sleeves rolled up so they don't constantly scratch my deltoid-region shoulders and make me flip out slash want to injure someone. So, in OT we're using vibration sensation to try to reduce hypersensitivity. It involves stimulating my arms with this magic vibration massage wand, starting with very tolerable sensation on the least irritated areas, currently my lower forearms close to my wrists. Right now we're dissipating some of the vibration by placing a foam ball between the vibration source and my arm, too. It's pretty benign, but we'll gradually make it more bothersome, increasing intensity and moving up to more irritable areas. Woohoo, doesn't intentional aggravation sound like fun? Like consciously getting a bad sunburn and then rubbing it with sandpaper... If therapy isn't crazy, it's not worthwhile!

Elsewhere, I just put fresh contacts in with record speed (not that fast)... I've still been rolling around the DMC for a few miles on nice days - long enough last time that one of the wheel batteries died after I got back to the room. In the rant world, some doctor felt it necessary to stand in the way of cars to lecture me on parking lot safety... Hope you're better at medicine than you are at real life, ma'am. Paralysis implies stupidity, right? Bring it. (Note: whine whine; people are in general not complete jerks.)

Game over! Insert coin. Au rev!

11 July 2009

burnt

Hey all! He returns, sort of...

Soooo, it's been a while! I'm not going to try to regurge everything; I think the quasi-accurate term for this is "taking a mulligan" on the past however long it's been, like blog bankruptcy protection. There was [were?] a visitor, a still-recurring fever, a trip to Central IL, many miles pushed around the DMC, and a heap of PT sessions... Fill in your own details, I suppose. It's probably more interesting that way.

My rambles are in shambles. More and better when I'm less pyretic. Word out.