My 8 week assessment crept up January 21. It’s already February so it’s almost irrelevant because my physio program is flying by. Alas, time is a thing and it happened.
I’m trying not to be negative, so here we go:
I didn’t have massive changes between the two assessments, but I need to adjust my focus to be on the beginning vs now. Another thing that helps me is to think about the difference it’s made in my energy on a whole. I know I moan about being tired all the time, but I don’t feel totally deflated so often these days. I have more energy and actually can go from 8am – 2pm and that’s including doing PoNS for an hour. There are days that I can’t do that, but the days I can are way more frequent.
At physio today I practiced walking on carpet with & without shoes. I want to work on this because I’ve had a few falls in my carpeted basement which gifted me a weird jelly ankle (from ankle rolls and foot fractures). My right foot doesn’t pick up properly so my toes sometimes get crushed and my sock slowly gets pulled off. The toe thing is really sore and something my dad always got on me about not wearing shoes.
I’m not sure why I always go into exercises feeling all sad about how I’m doing, but today my physiotherapist was pointing out positive changes that I didn’t even realize had happened. I was doing a side step on carpet, as I was moving my hip hiked up (what I’m trying to avoid) but my opposite knee bent and in my head I’m thinking “this is shit” so I went back to do it again. I redo a lot of exercises when I don’t do it properly because I refuse to accept my leg slacking off. He totally spun it a different & positive way by saying that a little hip hiking was ok there because I was aware of it and that my stubborn knee did bend. Anyways, I need to have that kind & forgiving attitude to myself! It’s so hard! I don’t even know when I became so rude to me. Oliver would say “that’s not very kind!”
Another thing that came from today is me actually learning why I work on balance, and specifically standing in tandem. I didn’t even know? I just did it, I had no idea why, I didn’t ask questions because they are the professionals. He told improving balance in a standing tandem position is just exaggerating the same balance you need to walk. It makes sense when you actually think about what your feet do when you walk. Prior to this program, actually before my right arm took to imitating a t-rex when I walk, I had never paid attention to how arms normally swing when you walk. Next time you walk you should focus on what your arms are doing. Then imagine that they just STOPPED, you forgot how, and then actively figure out how to time the swing of each arm with the opposite leg. When I “walk” my one arm knows what’s up but the other is in a stiff t-rex/Mr. Burns position. It’s cool. It gets worse when I’m trying to do things like stairs. Maybe it’s trying to give me a hug? But I don’t want an icy hug; go do something useful so you warm up and stop being all purple.
On a side note, I wonder if doing all this PoNS lately maybe helped me do so well with driving. Perhaps making new neural pathways allowed my left leg to pick it up easily. Yay! I’m pumped.
Falling Through Physio 