Alright Candi Sutton - since you complained that I hadn’t blogged, here ya go!
More progress all the time now. Tiffany (my PT) is back from her vacation and she was encouraged by how far I had come in two weeks with Walter. I saw her Wednesday and Friday this week. First she had me walking on the treadmill. She said my gait was already better. It was nice to hear that since I can’t tell the difference. We did some interval training and I got up to 2 mph which is a dead out sprint for me. 1 mph was a comfortable pass in between. After a while doing that, she wanted me to try walking without any brace at all on my right leg. That is definitely more difficult but forces those stabilizer muscles in the ankle to get to work. I’ll post a video, but it went surprisingly well. After a few minutes my right ankle started to fatigue. Pretty cool, though, walking without anything that fast. I had never tried walking with an AFO only on my left foot. Very encouraging.
After that I was drenched with sweat and exhausted, so we stretched for a few seconds before she had me trying to lift my leg while on my stomach - i.e. work the hamstrings. I was able to keep my left leg from falling (can’t lift it, yet) for the first time. Very cool. My right leg was able to “curl” multiple times before it got tired. Before I could only do it once, maybe twice. Progress.
Then we walked around with the crutches. But first she had me try standing on my own with them. I haven’t been able to, yet. I fell on her. I’ll post the video - it’s pretty funny.
She had me go to this undulating turf section in the obstacle course area. It was slightly hard just because it was new. About the 5th time through it was no big deal. That was Wednesday.
Today we went outside and took the crutches up and down a ramp. First using the handrail, then using just the crutches. Not so bad at all. I showed her how I could go up and down the stairs - no problem. Then I walked through a bunch of grass and even kind of messed with her by stepping on a bunch of roots so she would think I was gonna fall. Good stuff!
After being outside we went in and worked on the treadmill. We took my right brace off immediately. It went better than it had a couple days ago. I did it for 20 minutes, and then we took off the left brace, as well. My left foot dragged just a little bit, but otherwise it went alright. Pretty cool to be walking without any braces.
Also I was able to stand for 1 minute 4 seconds without holding on to anything.
Last night we went sailing on Tom’s boat with a bunch of folks. Really fun. And beautiful views of the sunset, moonrise (if that’s a thing) - just awesome in general. Here’s a couple pics people took:
And after therapy today, I did some work and then went to my first wheelchair softball tournament. Really awesome and the team was playing great. I didn’t get to play as I showed up when it really mattered. But I learned a lot. Hopefully will play when we go to NYC.
That’s me on the “bench.” This is the quarterfinals. We won. I left after the first inning of the semifinals. We play tomorrow if we won that. I have no idea if we did or not. I had to go because Rebecca and I are going bowling tonight. That’s right.
G’night -
Chip
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