Life lurches on as a denizen of Old Fart Farms.
feistiest. OT is occupational therapy, PT is physical therapy. I
about learning to do everyday things under new constraints. I guess they figure that older people, and particularly older single people who live alone, can find that to be somewhere between challenging and overwhelming.
help me get out of bed, get cleaned up, get dressed and off to
I grabbed the side rail of the bed with my left hand, rolled out and landed my butt in the wheelchair. She was only halfway to me when
you obviously have that under control! Shall we start getting you
I did. She watched. I was tempted to ask to see the clipboard upon
but I decided to skip it. I had to zing in and out of the bathroom a few times to get stuff. At one point I was trying to get my undies on
enough. She showed me a neat trick: grab the leg hole opposite the one being aimed at and then let gravity help rather than hinder. That
I said that as I was rolling out the door. Yep, coffee and breakfast it was; the PT lady would come and get me after that.
And so she did. New one today, Kristin is on vaca. OK, first thing
device comprised of levers with weights. From a seated position, one presses down on the levers to lift the weights. She had 17.5 lb on each lever today.
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She went off to do something. When she got back she asked if I was
sets. She looked at me a bit quizzically. She looked at the guy
going to hop with a walker, two laps around the area. One lap is about 20 yards. She put a lifting strap on me, grabbed it with one hand to catch me if I fell, and invited me to proceed. So I did. In this exercise, one sets the walker down while standing on the good leg, then suspends the body on the walker by pushing down with arms while hopping the leg ahead. When foot is planted, lift walker and move it forward to new position , set it down, hop again, continue. Seems to me to be an absurdly inefficient means of locomotion, but
After one lap, she said she often has to encourage people to try to go
off. She scurried to catch up.
She was gonna have me do 10 minutes on the Nustep TRS4000 recumbent cross-trainer (which I purely hate) but it was busy.
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So she suggested that we return to my room, with me propelling the wheelchair for as far as I could go. I could have rest stops. Ooo-kay!
which is maybe 2/3 of the way, she looked at me as she walked
the whole distance.
Now the doc is thinking about surgery again. Maybe he had some
a lot easier to cancel surgery than it is to schedule it. That does make sense.
Don Foreman