Today got off to a rough start. I wasn't feeling very well to begin with, but to add insult to injury (no pun intended) I woke up with my feet almost as swollen as they are late in the evening. This is NOT a good thing!
But I am determined to not let anything get in the way of doing at least SOMETHING, we head off to PT and I hope for the best.
The best was not exactly what happened, but we did have a few changes.
First, as you can see in the pic above,they started me on a new machine today. The elliptical. For those not familiar with this particular little lovely piece of torture equipment, it essentially gives you the same physical and aerobic workout as running, but without the impact.
From what I could tell, the main adjustments on this thing is the level of resistance (I started at 1, of course) and how long you spend on it. Today I put 7 minutes on the thing and it wasn't too bad. In fact, I kinda liked it. Getting my gimpy self on and off it was a challenge, but it was kinda nice...for now.
The next big change is, since I'm using a friend's treadmill at home, we are dropping it from the routine at PT to give more time for other fun. Also, we are changing the emphasis on the treadmill from building time to keeping the time static at 30 minutes and working on form, gait, speed, and incline. In that order. So when you look at the treadmill log you'll see what looks like a dip in my progress, but it is planned that way. No big.
If you'll remember I told you some time ago about an exercise of standing with my feet in certain positions to work on balance. Well, for the last few sessions we've been doing that with a bit of a twist. I stand on pillows for more challenge. Today we ramped it up a bit more. I stand on a mini trampoline! Talk about a challenge!
To add to the fun we are now waiting to see if insurance will approve more sessions. You may have noticed that we only had 2 sessions this week. That's because we are only approved for a total of 25 sessions unless and until we can show the insurance company that I still need to keep going. Since we are quickly approaching that limitation, we're cutting back on the frequency a bit until we hear from the insurance company. It is obscene that some insurance company rep with no medical knowledge has such a powerful role in dictating medical care from their little cubicle. But that's a whole other rant.
So that's about it. More challenges, more work, and steady progress.
Bless you all.
1 comment:
Excellent work! I hope the swelling is down today. I remember my first experience on the elliptical... it is an interesting piece of equipment but fantastic on the joints. It sure produces sore muscles but strengthens them just the same! Glad to see you are doing so well on the treadmill -- that's a great incline (I don't ever go that high). I look forward to watching your progress on the new settings. I'm so glad to see you doing so well! --semik
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