Boot Camp: Day 2-3 - Days Full of Pep

Day 2
I had a doctor's appointment early Tuesday. In the questionnaire they had me fill out they posed this statement:

I am full of pep.

They had me rate it on a scale on how true this statement was for me. I've taken this survey before but every time I see this I started giggling very quietly to myself. That question that early in the morning is always hilarious.

These past two days haven't been full of too much pep. Yesterday my brace started out peppy but died after about 20 minutes. I'm retiring the new brace for the rest of the trip, until we can send it back to the company for repairs which should take about a week.

Yesterday I got onto the therastride again. This machine positions you over a treadmill with a weight supporting harness. Everything is controlled by a computer which tracks the weight you are supporting on your own, the distance walked, and your speed. The previous times I've used the therastride I'd need large amounts of help swinging my left leg through and keeping the leg straight. Now that I have some muscles at the hip I only have to have help keeping the left leg steady.





This is a rather arduous process that takes the work of several staff members. It is nice to be able to walk in an almost normal fashion on dry land again. But the coolest thing to happen was the muscle contractions of my left quads (thigh). Here is a video of the newly strong muscles at work:



I also got into the therapy pool for the first time on Tuesday. The water is my natural element so I flourish there. Kennedy Krieger has a pool with an adjustable floor height and underwater treadmill, complete with cameras built into the walls so you can see what's happening underwater.





Day 3
I am not a morning person at all and apparently my therapist really is. So this morning as I yawned, my body creaking and cracking, she was bouncing along full of energy. As the day wore on and I started waking up she got more tired. As she finally said "see, I'm finally getting tired" all I had to say was a resounding "HAH!"

Now we didn't get to walking with canes on the previous day because right before we were going to, the computerized leg brace died again. So on Wednesday we brought the old leg brace and decided to start with canes. We took a small field trip and walked down to the fish tank downstairs and the garden path just outside.

Apparently I made walking with two canes look too easy so once we returned to the PT gym my canes were taken away and I was given a quad cane instead. I've used a quad cane before with good results so I wasn't too worried. Still unsatisfied with how easy I made it look, my therapist asked me why I couldn't just use a single cane. I didn't have a good answer so I picked up one of my canes (notice the flames on the side) and this was the result:



Needless to say on both days, after three hours of physical therapy and one hour of pool therapy I was beat. At the end of the day I was definitely out of pep and ready to crash for the night.