Achievements and goals

My physical therapy has really become go to the gym, run on the track. Yesterday before I played with the resistance machines I ran three times around the 200 m track. Each lap was under three minutes. That's an eighth of a mile and three minutes. I need to do that about 200 times to complete the marathon distance. 600 minutes, 10 hours. The first Sunday in November. I'm ready.

Occupational Therapy has split into its main components. Learning how to live my life with my Center for Musculoskeletal Care. I spend my time there in rooms where everyone is specializing in hand therapy. Today, I sat next to a woman who is having a hard time with the workout. She was doing something that I had not been instructed to do since I was inpatient at Rusk. She was just sitting at a table with her elbow in front of her and her hand laid out flat. She was attempting to move her hand from 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock and then back to 12 o'clock. Been to 10 o'clock and back to 12 o'clock. If you're sitting at a table now, try it. It's easy, right. But for the summer of 2014, I couldn't make my hand budge. I would just roll my wheelchair up to the table and put my elbows on it and watch nothing happen. I didn't even remember I have that problem until I saw that young woman during that same exercise.

I've learned to use a lot of adaptive tools to get through my day. The big accomplishment of this week is that I shaved that face. Yeah, I set the razor for grubby, because I knew I wasn't to do a great job. But I shaved that face.

For the past 20 months a lot of great people were helping me a lot. I really appreciated the help from nurses and family and friends. But I gotta say I was really sick of people sticking their hands in my face to feed me or brush my teeth. The last trick I needed to learn to do was shaving. I just grabbed the electric razor with two hands and rubbed it across my face. I had trouble with the little button to turn it on and off but I realized I can just push it against the corner of the sink. Yeah, occupational therapists get you do things you think you can do anymore by just convincing you to try it.  Now I just have to try to use these, and I'll be alright by myself.

They also get you to do things you couldn't do any more by pointing you to tools that can help you. my own fingernails today.

Who knew that this existed.

Ableware 741400000 Press-On One-Handed Nail Clipper by Maddak