September 6, 2006
Last evening I asked Gary if he’s ever yet had a dream where he’s in a wheelchair. I know that it wasn’t until years after I got CFS that I in my dream had it. Somehow, I was glad of that, as if that meant it wasn’t part of me, and I was disappointed when my dream self also got the disease. I know it’s a different thing, though, having an SCI. Rather hard to deny something so visible ;-). Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought the question up – he hadn’t had such a dream before this, but last night he did. He dreamt he was in the university gardens (where he used to take his walks), and he was worried he’d get stuck.
I took Gary to rehab, and we told the therapist we didn’t know what was going on with Gary’s tip bars. Yesterday at home he had wanted to practice wheelies with the tip bars on (not that I was thrilled by that), but first we were going to make sure that the tip bars would hold, so I got the gait belt and wrapped it around the axle of the wheelchair and around my hand, and he went up in the wheelie. Or rather, he tried to go up in the wheelie – he was on the tip bars before he was at the balance point. Since we hadn’t changed the setting on the tip bars, this confused us; the only thing we could figure out was that all my assembling and disassembling of his chair somehow affected the tip bars (the chair he was using at Shepherd was never taken apart, so we had nothing to base this on other than we couldn’t think of anything else that would affect the bars).
The therapist figured out that it was his foot placement! When she moved his feet further back on the footplate, he got up in the wheelie before hitting the tip bars. I don’t think we would have thought of that. We – or rather, Gary – will have to be more conscious of his foot placement – he is supposed to have the balls of his feet on the plate, and I think he has been having them too far forward lately.
I had intended to work on my story while he was doing weights, but you know what they say about good intentions ;-). First I decided I’d just do the wrist curls with him as always, because that’s the only weights I do there and I figure it’s good for me. Since we started in on the weights after we figured out about the tip bars, by the time we were done with the curls there was only forty minutes left to the session. I rationalized that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my story in that time because I am doing some nontrivial cutting out of unneeded plot threads and some rearranging of material and a lot of changing of dialogue (I conjecture that it is going to be harder to revise the first half of the story than the last, because when I wrote the first draft the characters and the plot weren’t clear in my mind at the start and I threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Well, I probably have the kitchen sink in there, too). But even if I hadn’t had that excuse, I am such a busybody about what he is up to I don’t know if I could be at rehab with him and not get involved with whatever he is up to. He playfully mocked me after the session. “I thought you were going to work on your story. Instead, you’re over with me telling me, ‘That looks too easy – sure you don’t need more weight?’ ‘Control your movements, don’t use momentum.’ And when the therapist said I was done, you go and say, ‘He hasn’t done lat pulldowns in a while. Was that intentional?’”
Which it wasn’t, and when she asked if he wanted to do them, he said sure. Fortunately he wasn’t dismayed I had brought that up. I’m always willing to make him work ;-)
He again showed definite signs of progress during the session. He hadn’t done triceps presses in a long time, and he added three plates to the exercise and said he could go even heavier next time. He added a plate to the rows, and after doing thirty reps, he said he could try heavier. So I added another plate – it turned out he couldn’t do those completely on his own, but with me holding his shoulders so he wouldn’t fall forward, he cranked out thirty reps of those, too. On the “diagonal pain” exercise, on his “bad” side (left shoulder), after doing thirty reps with a one-pound weight like last time, he was able to do fifteen reps with a two-pound weight. Finally, he added a plate to what he could do before on the lat pulldowns.
I don’t know if I’ve added any strength to what I came home with, but my massage therapist, who I saw today, says I definitely have more muscle in my arms and back and calves than I did last April.
I had arranged to have my massage to finish about the time Gary finished with his seminar. I called him on his cell to let him know I was coming, and he met me at the place I’ve been parking. First I noticed his pants were covered with chalk. I told him that at least that covered the stains and that I hoped not many people had noticed his pants needed washing – after we’d gotten them on him this morning, we’d both noticed they were filthy, but neither of us were in the mood to go through the rigamarole of taking them off and putting another pair of pants on him.
He got a call from someone who is also very interested in having a traffic light put where his accident occurred – this woman had told him she’d nearly been in a similar kind of accident. Today she told him she noticed there is an electronic traffic counter near the intersection – for the study they are doing.
While we were going through Gary’s stretching routine, he mentioned he was having phantom sensations. I thought he meant this was new, but he says he’s had them since the accident, though he’s never mentioned them before. He says they aren’t painful, but they’re like electric charges, and he knows they aren’t real because they don’t occur where his legs really are. He said that for instance, he now felt like he could feel that his leg was lying on the bed, only it wasn’t because at the time I had it straight up in the air doing a hamstring stretch on it.
For some reason he started thinking about the first day he’d gotten to eat, after the trache tube had been removed. All the food had been colored green because the therapist was watching it with a little camera to make sure it didn’t go down his trachea. He said despite its color, it had tasted great. He said he remembered really wanting a milkshake, and that I’d gone and got him one.
He said he also remembered how his voice was so weak at the beginning (I told him he’d sounded like Donald Duck). He remembered how nice it had been that his first talks to someone besides me or the hospital staff had been to our moms for Mothers Day.
Last evening I asked Gary if he’s ever yet had a dream where he’s in a wheelchair. I know that it wasn’t until years after I got CFS that I in my dream had it. Somehow, I was glad of that, as if that meant it wasn’t part of me, and I was disappointed when my dream self also got the disease. I know it’s a different thing, though, having an SCI. Rather hard to deny something so visible ;-). Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought the question up – he hadn’t had such a dream before this, but last night he did. He dreamt he was in the university gardens (where he used to take his walks), and he was worried he’d get stuck.
I took Gary to rehab, and we told the therapist we didn’t know what was going on with Gary’s tip bars. Yesterday at home he had wanted to practice wheelies with the tip bars on (not that I was thrilled by that), but first we were going to make sure that the tip bars would hold, so I got the gait belt and wrapped it around the axle of the wheelchair and around my hand, and he went up in the wheelie. Or rather, he tried to go up in the wheelie – he was on the tip bars before he was at the balance point. Since we hadn’t changed the setting on the tip bars, this confused us; the only thing we could figure out was that all my assembling and disassembling of his chair somehow affected the tip bars (the chair he was using at Shepherd was never taken apart, so we had nothing to base this on other than we couldn’t think of anything else that would affect the bars).
The therapist figured out that it was his foot placement! When she moved his feet further back on the footplate, he got up in the wheelie before hitting the tip bars. I don’t think we would have thought of that. We – or rather, Gary – will have to be more conscious of his foot placement – he is supposed to have the balls of his feet on the plate, and I think he has been having them too far forward lately.
I had intended to work on my story while he was doing weights, but you know what they say about good intentions ;-). First I decided I’d just do the wrist curls with him as always, because that’s the only weights I do there and I figure it’s good for me. Since we started in on the weights after we figured out about the tip bars, by the time we were done with the curls there was only forty minutes left to the session. I rationalized that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my story in that time because I am doing some nontrivial cutting out of unneeded plot threads and some rearranging of material and a lot of changing of dialogue (I conjecture that it is going to be harder to revise the first half of the story than the last, because when I wrote the first draft the characters and the plot weren’t clear in my mind at the start and I threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Well, I probably have the kitchen sink in there, too). But even if I hadn’t had that excuse, I am such a busybody about what he is up to I don’t know if I could be at rehab with him and not get involved with whatever he is up to. He playfully mocked me after the session. “I thought you were going to work on your story. Instead, you’re over with me telling me, ‘That looks too easy – sure you don’t need more weight?’ ‘Control your movements, don’t use momentum.’ And when the therapist said I was done, you go and say, ‘He hasn’t done lat pulldowns in a while. Was that intentional?’”
Which it wasn’t, and when she asked if he wanted to do them, he said sure. Fortunately he wasn’t dismayed I had brought that up. I’m always willing to make him work ;-)
He again showed definite signs of progress during the session. He hadn’t done triceps presses in a long time, and he added three plates to the exercise and said he could go even heavier next time. He added a plate to the rows, and after doing thirty reps, he said he could try heavier. So I added another plate – it turned out he couldn’t do those completely on his own, but with me holding his shoulders so he wouldn’t fall forward, he cranked out thirty reps of those, too. On the “diagonal pain” exercise, on his “bad” side (left shoulder), after doing thirty reps with a one-pound weight like last time, he was able to do fifteen reps with a two-pound weight. Finally, he added a plate to what he could do before on the lat pulldowns.
I don’t know if I’ve added any strength to what I came home with, but my massage therapist, who I saw today, says I definitely have more muscle in my arms and back and calves than I did last April.
I had arranged to have my massage to finish about the time Gary finished with his seminar. I called him on his cell to let him know I was coming, and he met me at the place I’ve been parking. First I noticed his pants were covered with chalk. I told him that at least that covered the stains and that I hoped not many people had noticed his pants needed washing – after we’d gotten them on him this morning, we’d both noticed they were filthy, but neither of us were in the mood to go through the rigamarole of taking them off and putting another pair of pants on him.
He got a call from someone who is also very interested in having a traffic light put where his accident occurred – this woman had told him she’d nearly been in a similar kind of accident. Today she told him she noticed there is an electronic traffic counter near the intersection – for the study they are doing.
While we were going through Gary’s stretching routine, he mentioned he was having phantom sensations. I thought he meant this was new, but he says he’s had them since the accident, though he’s never mentioned them before. He says they aren’t painful, but they’re like electric charges, and he knows they aren’t real because they don’t occur where his legs really are. He said that for instance, he now felt like he could feel that his leg was lying on the bed, only it wasn’t because at the time I had it straight up in the air doing a hamstring stretch on it.
For some reason he started thinking about the first day he’d gotten to eat, after the trache tube had been removed. All the food had been colored green because the therapist was watching it with a little camera to make sure it didn’t go down his trachea. He said despite its color, it had tasted great. He said he remembered really wanting a milkshake, and that I’d gone and got him one.
He said he also remembered how his voice was so weak at the beginning (I told him he’d sounded like Donald Duck). He remembered how nice it had been that his first talks to someone besides me or the hospital staff had been to our moms for Mothers Day.
posted by Peg Daniels at 8:13 PM
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